Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro

2009-02-27T00:35:00.001+08:00

It's Finally Here!

What's here? My TP enrolment package that is! It's about time, I have seen almost everybody get their package since 2 weeks ago. But whatever, the most important thing is it arrived and, my god there's lots of forms to fill in + going for medical checkup. I am also pondering whether to buy my notebook from the upcoming IT Show in March or to wait until April for the TP notebook fair. Well, at least it keeps me busy, rather than to rot at home doing nothing but stare at the computer/TV screen.

So last saturday, I went to the Singapore flyer hoping to get free tickets. The flyer opens at 8.30am and I arrived at 7am hoping not to end up at the back of a very long queue later on. But I was wrong, even at 7am, there is THOUSANDS of people queueing, it made 2 loops around the flyer! There were only 2009 tickets avavailable. My mum was still so naive as to believe that we will get tickets if we tried to queue. My dad and I were not so naive and decided to walk off for breakfast while my mum had no choice and left with a grumpy face =.="

Met Justina at the National Library later for our study session. I was having a bad cough that day and at 1 moment, I almost vomited while coughing, luckily I did not vomit out my light breakfast on the fabric sofa. =) She was doing H2 maths, what about me? Haha, I was being such an uncle by taking almost 2 hours to read finish The Straits Times! I love the ST on saturday, the most interesting edition of the week, partly because "Life" has car reviews, but mostly it is usually the thickest edition of the week.

She's really studying leh! I thought she would fall asleep (which she admitted later on, but I was so engrossed in my uncle newspaper, I did not notice =.=")After spending 3hrs + at the Library, Justina introduced me to her new friend from SRJC, his name is Faid and he's a friendly and fun guy to talk with. We instantly clicked and talk like we were long time friends. They went to buy their horribly expensive graphic calculator from Bras Basah and visted Melanie at her workplace later on. I think we got Mel into trouble as her boss ANNOUNCED into the PA SYSTEM requesting her to meet him the moment we talked to her. Poor Mel! Hope you are alright with ur boss.

Drum lessons for Justina was next and Faid and me spent the next hour walking around Funan so that I could research on laptops for my poly. He told me that his acer screen cracked (so did my dad's). This is good enough reason not to buy acer anymore.

When that aunty finished her drum lessons, we went to Dhoby Gaught MRT to meet that Diva, he took a long time to arrive and so we 'considerately' camped at a corner of the busy linkway interchange.

Haha, My new friend, Faid!Went to Justina's house later while Faid took the bus to his home at Punggol. Diva brought along his acer netbook. I must say the pink is one of the better shade of pinks around, I thought it was the barbie kind of pink. The laggy Intel Atom proccessor was quite irritating but we still managed to take some spasm pics on the built in webcam. After being distracted by the camera, those 2 JC peeps went on to study while I did a different sort of studying. What kind of studying did I do? Using power ranger's street directory, I found out that Chong Pang wasn't in Serrangoon and I mixed it up with Chomp Chomp. How noob!

Just then, somebody I could not recgonise opened the door. I was about to shout 'intruder' but then, I took a closer look at the man with spectacles dressed in formal clothes, it was Power Ranger! I never knew he could look this formal, I almost could not recgonise him. Well, clothes does change a person's image I guess!

Good Scooby, that fat orange refused to meet 'strangers' as usual. We weren't exactly strangers right?Our original plan for dinner was to da bao mac, but power ranger told us that Just's ah ma knew we were coming and cooked fried rice for us! The fried rice was delicious, Diva took 4 large servings! There was so much fried rice!

Emo cheers!Aunty! Can cook faster or not?To 'enhance' the taste of the rice, we added Just's great grandma incredibly spicy chilli sauce and some pepper. Yummy!Some sapsm pics!The holy white Diva!So what made the 'holy bright diva' effect? My long lost attachable camera flash which can be used together with my camera phone.
Pizza documentary is on TV (Travel & Living) now, its making me so hungry now, gonna stuff myself with something, bye!

2009-02-20T23:08:00.002+08:00

I Want Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream!

Yes I really doooo!!! I planned on having it after O levels finished, it was postponed becoz I thot it was not worth the $$, postpone till now when I finally tasted my 1st Ben & Jerry (B&J) ice cream (using my own $$) this year. Will talk more about B&J later.

So where do I start...? Ah yes! I met Justina and Diva last Friday at Kovan since it was near Justina's school. Diva was hopelessly late as he was coming from YJC which, by car is quite near, but by train it is an hr's ride. Contrary to my belief, Diva wasnt that bad in navigation at all. He took the shorter route by alighting at Toa Payoh and then take bus 153 to Kovan. I wonder if he took some tips from Varun o.0 Bought a bottle of Nutella as a surprise for Justina.

While waiting for that Diva, me and just walked almost the entire Kovan central, we even walked to Justina's pri sch which is nearby only to be chased out by the security guard =.=" Finally Diva arrived and I was quite shocked when I saw him, he did say he lost 6KG but I did not expect him to change in terms of size. But to my surpirse, he DID slim down abit! But after our up sized mac lunch, he would have gained back at least half of what he lost :)

Bused to SRJC coz Justina had *cannot be revealed yet* CCA in the aftnoon. SRJC was quite nice, we spent almost 3 hrs waiting for Just to complete her CCA =.=". Meanwhile, me and Diva were treated by Just's grandmother who was working there as a cafe vendor. She treated both of us pizzas and some mango ice blended drink. She's so nice! After Just came back, I revealed the Nutella and all of us started dipping into it. Justina treated it as a Valentines gift! Met Dayana later as she just finished band practice at SRJC and we saw some picture of a teacher that looks like Hai En. hahaha. Took the train to funan where justina needs to buy some music stuffs and it was sayonara! Valentines Day! Spent the day with the same people + Varun. I had free tickets for the fann wong movie 'The Wedding Game' which was incredibly boring (this was my 2nd time watching). Diva and me slept during parts of the movie while Justina did not. I'm not sure abt Varun. Before the movie, we bought 3 packs of chips and bottled drinks (to be smuggled into the movies).

Then while queueing to pay up at NTUC, this lady infront of us started talking crap to us. She was so RANDOM! I do admit her english is very good. But I'm not sure why she was worried (and I quote) that "the govt would inject something in our asses without our knowledge". I know! Its random right? I have no idea what she was talking about and everyone queueing around us was staring at our direction, how embarassing. She continued to blah blah blah and only Varun kept nodding his head. I for one could not be!bothered and started looking everywhere except at the lady. It was a random experience which caused us to be late for our movie.

After the movie, Diva and Justina fooled around at Challenger by destorying the wallpaper on the laptops on display. Varun had dinner with some others and we parted ways. Next up, dinner! I brought Diva and Just to Old Airport Rd hawker where I treated them to this super value Pasta meal! For $6, you get quite a large bowl of cream of mushroom soup, a bowl of pasta and a garlic bread. Even diva found it quite filling. The treat was our pre arranged plan - anyone of us who entered the disctinction club would have to treat the other 2 of us.

The pasta meal! Sunday was a study session for the JC peeps (Just, Varun, Diva). I came along because I was really bored. This study session is planned for every weekend. It would be a good time to keep in touch with each other too. When poly starts, I would have to study instead of slacking there.

Our original plan was to study at National Library. But Justina made last min changes and told us that her church would be also be a condusive place to study. Her church (which doesn't look like a church at all) was near Lavender MRT and was quite easy to find. When it was 12.30pm (the meeting time) only Justina and me were present. Slacked around in the baby room while Justina fell asleep while studying for her bio, like this:

Guess who is this?I, too fell asleep but somehow I managed to wake up earlier than her to snap this picture. Haha. Then, 2 hours later, Varun called to say he is reaching. We were feeling horribly hungry and decided to fetch Varun from the bus stop and then buy some bread from the confectionary. With Varun around. Things became more alive rather than the snooze session. Then Diva sent an sms telling us that he could not make it coz he was buying his new laptop. We were feeling hungry agn and I went down to the nearby 7-11 to buy the incredibly expensive cup noodles for all 3 of us.

Studied till it was almost 7pm then we bused to Vivo where Varun left us for his darling bus. Justina and me went to Giant to get our stuffs. I got my windbreaker and she got her safebox which was heavier than I expected considering the price of it. Went to my grandma hse at Sengkang after that. On the train, I read through Justina's econs notes and found out that econs is very interesting! If I went JC, I would surely take H2 econs.

On Monday, I finally met up Ary, Aishah and Xiao Dan! =) Haven't met them in a looonggg time, especially the 2 'A's. Our plan today was to walk from Alexendra to Vivo using the 2 bridges (again =.="). We spasmed and took lots of lame pictures and videos. It rained when we were within walking distance of Vivo (luckily).

Most of these pictures were taken using the self timer function. So ya, you can imgine how spasm-mie we got when the timer is counting down. Haha. So here are the spasm pics =)
Lunch was at Vivo's Banquet and XD brought a box of chocolate (most of which ended up in my stomach :P) Then, for the first time in... errr a few weeks? I had Ben's & Jerry ice cream! I just can't resist the chewy taste of B&J. I am going save up and buy a tub for myself!... Sometime!

BeforeAfterTP, I am still waiting for my enrolment letter! =( My sore throat is back again. Even more =(

2009-02-14T01:05:00.012+08:00

My Little Adventures

I had a series of unexpected adventures recently. 1st being my planned solo cycling trip to Temasek Poly to see how is the route like from Tampinese MRT to TP. 2nd was an unexpected trip to explore the parks/forests/bridges of the southern ridges.

Part 1

So, 1st up my planned solo cycling trip to TP which ended up as a cycling trip with one of my pri sch fren instead. The original plan was to meet my pri sch frens (Jason & Abel) for breakfast at mac before I set off for my solo cycling trip to TP. We spent more than 1 hr at mac chatting and aft that Abel decided to follow me on my trip since he was really bored. Disaster struck even before we left his estate, the chain on his bike came off and luckily the problem was simple to fix, though the grease did create a mess on my hands.

We mainly used the almost excellent Park Connector Network (PCN) to cycle from ECP to TP and back. I am glad that the govt is building such PCNs for cyclist and joggers alike. It is so much easier and safer to cycle on the PCNs than on the road. Although the system is not perfect (I will explain why later), I believe that the PCN is one of the govt's better policies and I look forward to the expansion of the network.

So it was a 1 hour trip from tiong to the start of East Coast Park using roads. We took a short break at ECP mac before cycling the rest of ECP+Changi Airport runway stretch to changi village via PCN. Luckily, the wind wasn't blowing as strongly as the last time I cycled there, which helps reduce the time we took to cycle to changi village. After about 1.5 hrs of cycling we reach changi village for lunch and a break.

The next leg of the trip was to cycle to TP using the Loyang PCN and the Tampines PCN. This leg was the toughest part of the whole journey. The loyang PCN was a constant uphill climb and within minutes, our legs started to ache alot. This is the first time i felt real pain in my thigh while cycling, not the usual 'tiredness'. After a terribly long and arduous climb we reached Pasir Ris park which leads us to the Tampines PCN where the hills fortunately stopped going up and it was a relatively easy ride to Tampines MRT.

Part of the purpose of this trip is to test out the feasibility of me cycling to TP when poly starts. What I found out is that it is a very easy 10min cycle to TP from Tampines MRT. This is largely due to the PCN from Tampines MRT to the junction before TP. I also noticed that alot of TP students cycle to school too, which is apparent from the number of bikes parked inside. The only grouse I have is that pedestrains don't keep to their own pavements and sometimes walk on the PCN pathway, which is an irritant for cyclists. I would explore taking the bus and walking to TP sometime later.

After cycling the length of TP, we decided to take another (shorter) PCN back to ECP. We were quite tired by then and did not notice that there was a more straight forward Bedok PCN nearby. Instead we took the Siglap PCN which was filled with various obstacles.

The most problematic PCN I have encountered so far

It was the only PCN I got lost in. 1st, the PCN snakes through various HDB estates, which isn't a complain, but the way the signs are placed is a complaint. At various junctions, signs were non - existent or placed badly. What happened next was a series of disasters after disasters.

We crossed one of the many bridges in this PCN and found out it was leading us away from ECP instead of towards it. We backtracked and found out that we should not have crossed the bridge at all. We eventually found the correct way which leads us straight into another problem.

Usually, PCN overhead bridges has ramps for bikes to be pushed up. But when we cycled to Bedok North, we were lead by the arrows to this overheadbridge which looks like a normal pedestrain bridge, not for bikes.Just then, a burst of heavy rain started to plet down on us. It was a 5min heavy thunderstorm which made us run for cover under a tree (the nearest acceptable shelter near us) while we wait for the short thunderstorm to past. While waiting, we FINALLY figured out that we have to push our bikes up this really narrow and steep ramp at both sides of the bridge. Well, at least they provided a ramp for us to push our bikes up. But it would be better if they would build a bridge with a proper ramp instead (maybe its not built due to space contraints?) Decending was dangerous! The concrete was wet and my brakes/tyres kept locking up making the bike slide down the ramp even faster. I resorted to carrying my bike down instead.

This is how the really narrow ramp looks like A closer look at itNow for the next disaster, right after we finished crossing the flawed bridge, Abel's bike chain came off again! I had to repair the chain once again which made my hand really dirty, thankfully, I expected mechanical problems like these and brought along wet tissue towels. The weather looked really threatening and the ground was quite wet and slippery which made the next part of the PCN really dangerous as it is filled with tight/sweeping bends and various up/down hills, just like a F1 track. We rode really cautiously throughout the whole 'F1 track' until we have to cross yet another bridge (this time, with a proper ramp, not stairs!).

Upon crossing, the next disaster stuck! We looked on the words painted on the ground and sighed.So after 5.4 KM of weaving through the really crowded Eunos area, having the bike tyre splash ground water on our faces and crossing yet another bridge, we finally reached East Coast Park! There, we were given a reward by chancing upon our own Mediacorp actor Edmund Chen (Chen Zi Cai) and his son jogging. Haha, did not talk to him though, as I was on the bike. We took a well deserved rest at the mac area of ECP before setting off to Old Airport Rd hawker for dinner.

Dinner was a $6 pasta meal, complete with a bowl of cream of mushroom soup and garlic bread! Yummy! I will be having that same meal again soon with the usual peeps :P My treat! So we rode home from the hakwer and arrived home at 10pm.

It was a interesting trip, especially getting lost for a while at the Bedok North area, and only to find out (when i got home) that there was a much more straight forward path to ECP via the Bedok PCN instead of the crowded and obstacle filled Siglap PCN. Nonetheless, the experience at Siglap PCN will be a moment I would think back and laugh about :P

My next cycling trip would proabably be in the western part of the island as i haven't cycled there before, Most probabaly I would start cycling to Bt Batok park and then down to Jurong and so on. We'll see if this trip will be a reality or not.

Part 2

Now this trip will be about my totally unexpected trip through the parks of the southern ridges (eg, Kent Ridge and Mount Faber park)

It all started when Haikal and me were supposed to start working at some telemarketing company at Science Park 1 (near Bouna Vista). We met for breakfast at Ghim Moh hawker and then caught a bus to take us to our future office. At the office, the HR person told us that their call center was full that day and it was their mistake for not informing us earlier, she said she would call us back the next week to tell us if there's any more vacancies or not. We left the office angry but not disapointed (strangely). I felt a sense of relief that I could still enjoy my holidays and not be bogged down by work.

We walked out of the building and immediately stumbled upon our next problem, since it was so early (10am), what shall we do now? Then an inspiration suddenly appeared. Since we are in the middle of the Kent Ridge Park, why not we use it to walk all the way to Vivo and cross the tallest pedestrain bridge in S'pore along the way? A quick look at the map shows that we are quite a long way from Vivo. Well, that doesn't matter as we have plenty of time on our hands. So, this is how our unexpected adventure begun.

The problem is, we were in the totally wrong attire to 'hike' through the parks. We were in jeans and t shirt, which was the dress code for working in the office, not for 'parking'. The sun was incredibly hot that day. Luckily, there were rest stops on the way where toilet and drinking facilites are provided. So here are some of the pictures of places we passed by on our trip.

The long metal bridge which was quite fun to walk on as the floor was made out of metal grilles which allos you to see the ground. People with fear of heights would be better off walking with a blindfold!The bridge zig zags up the Telok Blangah HillNice view eh? (My Pri 6 teacher lives at the white HDB block on the extreme left :P)One of the star trek looking rest stops. Cool! Finally we reached the peak of Telok Blangah hill where we saw this guy driving (more like racing) a S Class Mercedes doing laps after laps on the windy and narrow roads of Telok Blangah hill. Haha, future F1 driver in the making eh?There, we had to climb up more hillsto reach...Yeah! Henderson Waves, the name of the tallest pedestrian bridge in S'pore. It is around 70+ metres above sea level and the view of and from the bridge is beautiful!Have you ever seen the road this far and small away from a pedestrian bridge in S'pore? Surely not!
Henderson Waves leads us straight to Mt Faber where we visted the cable car station which I haven't visted since errrr... god knows when. Alot has changed since, for example, the coin operated binoclulars has shifted to a less scenic spot on Mount Faber. Luckily, the original koi pond is still largely intact.Specatcular views from Mt Faber
We finally reached Seah Im food centre which is opposite Vivo. It was my 1st time having lunch there and thankfully, we managed to find a seat during the crowded lunch time hours.Nothing significant happened after that except that I downed a 1 litre bottle of Meji choc milk and had runs that evening =.="

Well, I had fun in all my unexpected adventures at Siglap PCN and Southern Ridges park. Kudos to the National Parks Board for building parks like these in land scarced S'pore.

Ok, enough of parks, my horribly ancient phone, the SE K750i needs replacing soon. The joystick has been acting up lately, dust has been accumulating in the screen which makes reading in the sunlight almost impossible. And my screen has rows of dead pixles already. But I must say that although it has faults, it has lasted a rough 3 years and 3 months with me already. It has been abused countless of times, once it dropped on a sharp small rock on the ground while I was running for the cross country in Macritchie and that caused a visible dent on the phone.

I am now planning to get this phone, the w902i for its sturdy feeling and decent camera. Although I am not a fan of walkman, I don't mind having this phone as I feel it is built to last, and reliability plays a big part for me in choosing phones. My SE K750i passed the test with flying colours and I hope this phone can do the same! The only problem is, this phone is bloody expensive. The last time I checked, it was selling at $498 with a 2 year contract :o I guess I will wait for the price to drop before I buy this phone.

Ok, now Valentines day is here already! I really want to wish all my loved friends a Happy Valentines Day! I really appreciate the happy times we spent together. Memorable moments with people like Diva, Justina, Varun, Haikal, Ary, Aishah, XD, Dan, Elsie and so on.... will always be remembered! Don't be angry with me if i never mention your name ok? :P There are just too many people to list out. Here once again, wishing everyone a Happy Valentines Day! Cherish the moments spent with your loved ones.

2009-02-05T16:27:00.003+08:00

Please Find Me Something To Do!

Well, I did say I would update once I got my poly posting results, so here I am! I was posted to Temasek Poly's Aviation Management & Services course - My 1st choice! :P Xiao Dan was also posted into the same course as me. With that, I would probably be working in Changi Airport in the future! I am glad that quite a number of my friends are going to TP too! People I often hang out with, eg Diva, Justina, Varun have all gone to JC which leaves me with nothing to do when JC started a few days ago =.="

This could be my future workplace :P
Now I am feeling so bored, mainly relying on my computer games to keep myself entertained. Luckily, Justina the JC nerd did not go totally emo after JC started :P We still hang out once in a while, eg-to celebrate mel's birthday.

My cycling trip as gone well so far. I have completed my holiday wishes which is to go Ubin and Seletar to cycle.

I went cycling at Seletar with Justina and her dad since they were the only ones living nearby. It was a very dusty place as heavy construction is going on to redevelop the area into the future Seletar Aerospace hub. Since there were no pavements, we had to cycle on the narrow 1 lane road. It was especially scary when dozens of dump trucks just drive past you kicking up a cloud of dust while doing so. This area is one of the last remaining places where old British Colonial houses can still be found (the other place being Portsdown Rd). So, do visit while it is still around. It will be gone in no time. Now, look what I have found!

What is gay hammy doing in Seletar?A disturbing sight has been appearing on the roads of Singapore. Some disgustingly painted pink taxis with cow horns & tails on them have been spotted and one even made it onto the newspaper. I hope they would at least change the colour of the cow taxi. Not pink please!
Ubin was fun! Me, together with Haikal, Elsie, Vivek, Justina and Xiao Dan went ubin to cycle on a bright sunny morning. We rented bikes that just cost $5 per day to rent! It was a rather crap bike with all of us finding various problems with the bike. For instance, I had my chain falling off the teeth 8 times, so did Elsie and Haikal. Vivek and my bike had spoilt front suspension. The rear ones were so rusty that it did not work at all! Vivek was having the worst problem among us by far, he had his rear brakes permanently rubbing the rim of his tyre. Which means he rode the whole day with his brakes on. No wonder he has been having leg cramps the whole day!

Other than the bike problems, we also got lost for more than an hour after we decided to venture off the beaten track. It was tiring when we got lost. The 'road' wasn't really a road at all, it was just a track filled with mud/bricks/stones which made cycling on them a real headache! It was nonetheless a fun adventure. We, of course managed to find our way out of the forest. We also threw countless number of rocks into the sea for fun.

And what's an adventure without a campfire? We found an undisclosed spot on the island and made a campfire using lots of dried leaves, cardboards, newspapers, rocks and a lighter. It was not a complete success, but it was not a failure either. We managed to keep the fire alive for quite a while. Here are some pictures

Get the fire started damn it!
Finally, now pass me the cardboards
It's getting smoky, we do not want to attract attenttion right? This Justina Sun Wu Kong ah! Instead of helping out with the fire, started posing for the camera insteadThe fire taking it's last breath
While on the boat back to mainland Singapore, I caught a high fever, glad to say I have already recovered from the fever or I wouldn't be blogging now.

I need to find a job soon, and I would continue my cycling expedition around Singapore. Next up would probably a cycling trip to Pasir Ris park and back, via ECP, Changi Village. I also hope I can meet up with the JC peeps soon, I miss them already!

Hmm, when will my next update be? Your guess is as good as mine :)

2009-01-12T22:49:00.004+08:00

O Level Results Released!

As you would have already guessed it, this post will be about my results in the 2008 O levels exam.

Well, what I can say is that i really, i mean really did not expect what I got. I was expected at best a L1R4 of 10-15 points, 10 points is being really optimistic as my real prelims was only 15 pnts (they made a mistake and put 12). The 2 A I was expecting was from D&T and Combined Humanities.

So i came to school and saw Gary Tan first. I was "Oh shit, I'm not talking to him". Then the next moment he said hi me and told me that he was very happy with my Combined Humanities marks and I guessed I scored and A1. (which I did)

At the hall, Loo Loo also said I have done well, so I was thinking, "hmm, I could have gotten a 12 or something". And then Cecilia showed the 'distinction club' members (people who have 4 A or above). I was stunned to see my name up there. I never expected myself to get 4 A, 2 being my optimistic target.

So I received my result and I can't believe I got 9 pnts for my L1R4! I was condemning people who gets single digit and goes to poly. Now I think people will condemn me instead =.=". My L1R5 was a reasonable 13.

I'm planning to go to Temasek Poly's Aviation and Mangement Services course which has a cut of point of 10 last year. So after deducting my CCA bonus points, I think my nett points shld be 8, which I hope is good enough for that course!

Ok, thats alot of talking and (maybe boasting), but such things don't come again and its ok to be ego abit, but I will not make 'ego' as my lifestyle. Ok, just for kicks, the new Ferrari F1 car named F60 is super hideously ugly, just take a look! BMW's F1 car is worse I tell you! Kids, get your blind folds on!
Going off, people, decide your JAE choices properly! Till then, good luck with your postings, may all of our JC/Poly dreams come true!

2008-12-01T02:15:00.001+08:00

Time To Recap!

Hey peeps! The universe has changed its shape, the President of USA has been decided, stupid people with no brains just blew up buildings in Mumbai and Bangkok has turned from a land of smiles, to a land of protesting monkeys. My favourite TV show, Top Gear has already progressed 2 more series! This is what happened between now, and the time I last updated this rotting blog.

Old news, typed out in October:
As you would have already noticed, I am so in LOVE with London now. I just don't know why. Probably watching too much Top Gear can cause you to fall in love with London? My love for London was so great that I even went to the extent of writing London in most of my Social Studies answers and even putting up a 'spy' cam of London's famous Piccadilly Circus (which I have just shifted to the bottom of the page) I'm such a stalker, I know. The new Discovery Magazine that the school gave has a night time satellite picture of London. The first thing that caught my eye was the infamous London's M25 motorway. It was so damn obvious for my trained eye, I went on the read the captions for the picture and true enough, they mentioned the M25 which can be seen circling around the bright spot in central London. Enough of London already! Let's move on to Los Angeles! I shall not say much but I am also watching their traffic webcams also... o.0

While 'stalking' London, I found something very interesting, notice the yellow tractor (something like that) at the left hand side of the pic? Thats strange considering that there are no construction going on at the famous Piccadilly Circus. And this is for Varun, I spotted ur old school London Routemaster bus
M25 motorway

Fast forward to November:

Finally, O levels is finally over! No more slogging through the night, no more nagging from parents for slacking and no more SCHOOL! I'm not planning to get a job anytime soon as I think that we should not waste our youth (and our student concession pass) to go out to work. Work is an inevitable part of adult life and there's no escaping from it. However, since we have the time now, why not use it to enjoy life first. There's no more chance to enjoy such a long break next time till you retire. Thus, I'll make full use of the time now. This is a rough sketch of what I will do during the 2 months of true holidays (previous holidays were filled with end of year assignments, not this year!)

1) Explore Singapore on bus, I'll make full use of my student concession pass as it will expire in a month's time!!! I will sit random buses all around Singapore.

2) While on my Singapore expedition, I shall try out good food at various hawker centers.

3) Explore parts of Singapore that I didn't know existed before, ie, Piccadilly Circus.

4) Go Ubin cycling, and of course night cycling!

5) Hang out with friends

6) Play computer games like my Test Drive Unlimited on my G25 steering wheel and my newly bought game called Sim City 4 and Sim City Societies.

Anyway, here are some ancient pictures that has been left in my hard disk for quite sometime. These pictures are arranged in random order.

Found some funny spasm face pictures of Jeremy Clarkson from Top Gear

Grrrr....

o.0Staying with Top Gear, I recently got myself a cool wall from the Top Gear Singapore magazine

The real (and original) cool wall from the Top Gear TV show My version of the cool wall If you think any car or person should not be in their respective categories, please tell me! And I will see how feasible your comments are.

Now my bedroom wall is now littered with posters =.=" Messy Something for me to celebrate about! My new lift opened in September 25th! Now I don't have to climb the staircase to get to the old lift liao!

My sparkling new lift! These buttons are very noisy! Everyone of them produces a high pitch beeeppp when pressed, except the alarm button of course, which produces a much louder sound. And for those who are curious on what I made for my O levels D&T project. Here are some pics of the finished product. It is a device which can be attactched to the car's rear windscreen and it can display messages through a rotating device. Complicated wirings
And the presentation boardMy own version of the infamous ERP
So on National Day, my family and I went to Mount Faber to watch the fireworks. So after that we drove down the one way road and there was a massive jam. I thought it was normal as there was quite a lot of people. But after 10mins, the jam barely moved at all. My dad's car was stationery for 10mins. Fed up, I went to take a look at what is happening in front. And this is what I saw: (sorry for the grainy pictures, my camera sucks)

A crowd of people gathering around a bus. Hmmm, lets walk further to find out!
So.... this red Mazda 3 is blocking the bus.... Stupid driver. Park on double yellow line. After a sharp bend somemore. No brain driver.The bus tried in vain to pass the Mazda car, but to no avail. As you can see from these pictures...A crowd of men has gathered around the car to try to lift it out of the way. Obviously their ambitious attempt failed as the Mazda 3 weigh around 1400KG.Waiting...waiting...waiting... Half an hour passed and still no sign of the bloody driver. Jams continues to form behind the bus. Horns blarring, people stuck in the bus. All these because of a single idiotic driver. By now the Police has arrived and can't do anything but wait for the driver to arrive, where a fine would be inevitable. For those hardcore 4-D beters out there. This is the number plate. For non gamblers, You could use the number to scribble on walls or use them as your lucky numbers. This driver needs to be taught a lesson. Finally, the driver arrived! Greeted the driver were many angry faces, rude insults and of course the Police. And guess who the driver was? A woman driver!!!!! Stupid china bitch. Cause so much pain and suffering to the people behind her. She promptly moved her car away to a proper parking spot where the Police interogated her. Finally, traffic was moving and I can finally leave the exhaust fume chocked Mount Faber. Hope the bitch got fined heavily!

Stupid China Bitch! Somemore woman drivers in action elsewhere...

This white Honda Civic which was driven by a woman driver (I saw it with my own eyes) crashed into the pavement at Jln Bt Merah, another classic example of how not to drive, brought to you by women drivers. By the way, sharp eyed people may have noticed that this driver has a P-Plate on the car, which may explain the foolishness.So, somewhere before the O levels, my usual group of friends hung out at Suntec City Toys'R Us, here are some spasm pics.

Swordfight/ suicide mission between our 2 manga fanatics.

Somehow, I joined in the fight too!Ok, I took a funny pic of my cousin who looks like Ruhua (is it this name?)Some funny pics from the last days of normal lessons in Queensway.

Guess who is this garbage guy?The usual clowning around by Hai Shien and gang =.="And finally, our In house entertainer/clown - Yun Keat! Performing is Soda bottle trickSo recently I've been trying out some pics modification on Picnik, which is a picture editing software which does great modifications! Here's a sample, tell me how it looks like for my first try (it may not look good though)

Picture before edit
Picture after editTiger car, bet you wouldn't find that on the roads!Recently, there's an influx or Nissan GT-R (R35) in Singapore, I'm afraid it will have a reputation of those modified Mitsubishi EVO or Subaru WRX. Here are some GT-R which I have bothered to take pics of

Tiger GT-RThe normal GT-RsNow, this is a unique car! A Lotus 340r. This picture is taken by my Dad in Singapore when he sent his car for inspection. I saw this car at Sentosa once, but it was speeding and did not manage to steal a picture of it.I like this picture, a picture of a souped up Boxter S and an old school Merc convertibleLambo frenzy!

This picture was destroyed by Diva because he changed my camera effects to Sepia =.="Aston Martin DB9, James Bond's stuffsFerrari F430
Interior of itSo, this is the end of a long overdued post. I have ommited lots of pics here as I am too lazy to drag them into place. The next update (if there's ever one) will be on my life after O levels and the last days of sec school life. Till then, don't say I haven't revived my blog ok?

2008-09-16T16:54:00.003+08:00

Singapore Grand Prix Preview
(Special Post)

Unless you have been living in a cave somewhere in the Pacific, you should have already known that the Singapore Grand Prix is the first Formula 1 night race ever! Hosting the race doesn't come cheap though. It is reported that more than SGD100 million dollars is paid to the FIA just for the hosting rights alone! Well, the race day (28 Septemper) is drawing nearer as I speak.

To find out what the organisers has done for the S'pore Grand Prix preparations, I did a 5 hour tour round the Marina Bay Street Circuit during the June holidays. As far as I can see, the track is 3/4 done at that time. Half of the circuit's unique lighting system is already in place. Most of the roads that will be used for the track was resurfaced with a special blend of asphalt to cope with the immense power of these F1 cars. I also visited the newly opened Singapore Flyer.

The Singapore Street Circuit layout. It will run in the anti-clockwise direction with a distance of 5.067 KM per lap. Drivers will be completing 61 laps come late September. The circuit will bring the drivers past several of S'pore most interesting buildings. The old style colonial buildings around the Padang area, including the old supreme court and Victoria concert hall. Drivers will also zoom across the Singapore river on 2 occasions.

The first will be the century old Anderson Bridge, this is the narrowest part of the track, thus the drivers must be careful when speeding past here. The second bridge is the Esplanade Bridge which immediately follows the corner after Anderson Bridge. It is one of the widest part of the circuit as drivers will zoom down to the iconic Durian -shaped Esplanade. Drivers will then zoom past the National Day grandstand and, another uniquely Singapore feature, drive under the grandstand! It's a shorter version of the Monaco tunnel!

You'll get a better idea of what I've talked about by looking at the circuit plan diagram The road surface is different from normal roads as the road has to withstand the great forces applied onto the road by the powerful F1 cars.

As you can see from this picture, the darker surface is the racing track surface which is more coarse than the lighter, normal road surface.
Surface on the left is the normal road surface while the surface on the right is the racing track surface.
Many drivers have complained in the past at other venues that the white lane markings are very slippery, especially in the wet. As the track will be run on public roads, it will not be feasible to remove the road markings. Thus, the people had come out with an ingenious solution.

Notice the small dots on the painted lines? These dots are there to provide traction for the F1 cars. It has dots punched into it to mimic the road surface. It also helps to drain water away in the wet (to a small extent)
Now, for my 5 hour walk, I started off at Suntec City Convention Centre, walked up Raffles Boulevard towards Benjamin Shears Bridge and towards the Singapore Flyer Ferris Wheel. I went up the Shears Bridge and back down again to the opposite side. Walked down Raffles Avenue towards Esplanade to have a water break. Yes, my water bottle ran out halfway so I refilled it with tap water! Walked down the St Andrews road towards the Padang. Then I crossed over to Esplanade Drive where I went to the Anderson Bridge.

Now, pictures time! (Pictures are taken using my ageing Sony Erricson K750i, apologies if pictures are not of good quality)

I started off my journey here, just before Marina Square on Raffles Boulevard (between Turns 5 and 6). The F1 cars will go against the normal traffic flow here.Further up the road, I spotted the unmistakable lighting poles which supports the 1600 lights that will surround the track.
Behind me was the Pit Building! It was built in a record 8 months! Further up the road is the famous Singapore Flyer Ferris Wheel. It is one of the hot spots to catch the race! It is also a hot spot for me to take pictures of the track.

The Singapore Flyer Ferris WheelI love this picture below, I think it is very artistic. Not bad considering I was using a camera phone =) ~ Taken at the base of the Ferris Wheel.

At the flyer, I got an even better view of the Pit Building. Too bad it's vicinity is closed off to the public and this is as close as I can get to the Pit Building.
The Flyer also provided me a good spot to look at the track and the lighting system beside it.

This is the stretch of track just before the last corner of the circuit, which will lead us back to the Start/Finish line.
The lighting poles and the lights themselves!The lights close up

This, along with the other flyer picture, is one of the best pictures taken here. Heaven blessed me with beautiful skies that day. This picture is in no way edited or some people might call it, Photoshopped. I have no idea how to use photoshop and I don't have one installed in my computer. What you see here is what it looks like that day =)

Artistic right? Thanks to the beautiful sky too!

Track side!
The weather was hot hot hot! I was sweating bucket loads of water by then, took a quick rest under the comfort of the flyer and I set off again.

Turns 20 and 21 still in a big mess.Beside this corner, a new DNA shaped bridge is being built. It will link Raffles Ave to the new Marina Bay IR when it is completed in 2009 or 2010.I went up Benjamin Shears Bridge to have a better view of the circuit. It was amazing in many ways. The bridge was shaking quite a lot as vehicles zoom past me. It was quite scary standing on it. Obviously you can't feel it move in a vehicle. This was also my first time climbing the bridge on foot. The view of the city skyline was simply spectacular!

The Singapore Flyer taken from Shears BridgeRaffles Boulevard, between Turns 5 and 6. Cars will go against traffic flow on race dayBird's eye view of Turns 20 and 21Raffles Ave, just before Turn 20. F1 cars will again, go against normal traffic flow here. The Marina Bay Floating Platform. The F1 cars will zoom past here and through a tunnel underneath the Grandstand to re-emerge onto Raffles Ave.F1 cars will emerge from the tunnel here after passing the floating platform. [Turn 19]
I found this interesting electronic board that states the number of car park lots in the area so that drivers do not have to circle the area finding for lots, causing even more jam.The new 'Marina Bay DNA' Bridge I mentioned earlier is undergoing construction.I then crossed to the opposite side of the Shears Bridge to have a better view of the eastern part of the circuit.

Turn 5, F1 cars will, as usual go against normal traffic flow here
The stretch of track before the last corners, Turns 22 and 23. You can see just how close the cars will zoom past the sea. Scary!I walked to Esplanade Mall to have a drink. Here's a picture of Turn 15 beside the iconic Esplanade Theatres. I walked down to St Andrew's Rd. This is where F1 cars will zoom against traffic flow (as usual) past some of Singapore's century old buildings. This includes the Old Supreme Court, Victoria Concert Hall and Padang.

This stretch of track is between Turns 9 and 10

The F1 cars will drive over the 100 years old Anderson Bridge to meet at Turn 13

Anderson Bridge
Turn 13Light pole (without lights) at Turn 13After Turn 13, drivers will drive past some Singapore landmarks including the statue of the Merlion and past at the same time, have a great view of the floating platform and the S'pore Flyer.

Merlion

The view from Esplanade Bridge after Turn 13
Esplanade Bridge, between Turns 13 and 14Now we come to an interesting part of the circuit. It is the junction between Raffles Ave, Nicol Highway and Standford Road. As you can see from the circuit diagram, there is a part in the middle of the circuit where the track 'splits' up. From this view, F1 cars will turn right into Turn 8. It will come around in the opposite direction and then turn right again into Turn 14.

Turn 14 <<-----Left--- ----Right------->> Turn 8
This siginifies the end of my tour round the Marina Bay Circuit. Remember to watch the inagural Singapore Grand Prix from where ever you are. For Singaporeans, it will be shown 'Live' on Channel 5 on 28th Septemper (Race) and 27th September (Qualifying). Who will win the first ever night race? Stay tuned to find out!

2008-08-14T21:38:00.002+08:00

I'm Back!
(for now)

You guys must be wondering where the hell I disappeared to for the last month? Well, I finally found the mood and the time to blog. This post is not a proper post but its more about an explanation post about my strange disappearance.

You see, my D&T O level course work is due next week and I have been busy rushing though it, the tons of homework that Loo Loo/Soon gave didn't improve matters. Due to my hectic schedule, I'm unable to blog for the past month. I won't die by not blogging but I will die for not doing my D&T work. Must prioritise time ok?

Anyway just a brief write up about what happened today. I had my English O level oral and was disappointed that there were no political questions or something that has to do with tourism. It is about some kiddos having some fun building sandcastles. The convo topic was about if I had taken part in any competition before? I wanted to shout 'No!' straight away because that's the truth, but since that 'No' will mean instant death to my English grades, I bullshitted about a swimming competition I entered in Pri 4 and I got 4th place (coincidentally, 4 and 4 o.0 - Scandalous!)

The questions they asked were not 'mature' at all. So kiddy kind of questions. Never ask about the current affairs, politics and economy... Anyway, at least they asked about the beach and not about hairstyles which they did the previous day. I tell you hor, if I kena yesterday's topic, my mouth will open wide and my mind will shut down instantly man.

The 2nd topic was about if children nowadays need to go out more. I said that we are pampered nowadays in the sense that most of us have computers at home. And stupid games like Maplestory terrorise youths by causing them to be game addicts. Haha, I did not actually say stupid games but you get the idea. I, unknowingly answered the next question they were going to ask me. They only asked me the competition question and the children going outdoors question. But AK got an extra question which I answered in my 'outdoors' question. I heard from AK that she was asked 'What are the harmful effects of computer gaming?' Cool man, I took the initiative to foresee and answer their question, hope they give me more marks =)

Then my reading I stumbled a little and I somehow managed to lose my sentence that I was reading! They must be thinking why this guy suddenly read so slowly. Stupid reflective plastic cover, I moved my paper a little bit and the reflection of the light just blinded me momentarily. Haiz, I think oral was not particularly bad neither was it good. Best I can hope is a 30/40 bah.

Ok, thats enough for this post, my next post will probably be a long time later, exams are coming, I don't study I die, I don't blog I won't die. But I guess I will be doing a special post by end of September bah. Stay tuned!

2008-07-06T02:21:00.005+08:00

Japan Trip, (11th-17 June 2007)
(Special post)

Hey guys! This is the special post you have been waiting for. You must have guessed the subject of my special post already. Yes, it is my trip to Japan last year. As this period of time happens to be the 1st year anniversary of my first ever trip to Japan, I will commemorate that special moment by doing a write up about what me and my fellow friends who went there did. It is going to be a long long write up so be prepared! =)

Apologies for the late posting too. It is an incredibly long post and naturally, it takes and incredibly long time to type and post. *Please also note that some pictures used here does not belong to me. If you are the owner of some of these pictures and wish to have them taken down, please inform me via my Cbox! Nonetheless, 70% of the pictures here are mine!

As I do not have a blog last year, the pictures taken aren't exactly what you call entertaining or informative. So please pardon me for my quite badly taken photos. Basically, my photos aren't blog orientated. Not having a blog last year is also the reason why I chose to post about my trip now. Most of my pictures are taken using my trusty Sony Ericsson K750i camera phone, but the quality of these pictures won't be as bad as you would think. So I shall not rant on further and start narrating my adventure in Japan!

But first, let me do a short introduction about the trip. It is the first trip to Japan that the school had organised. There are 33 students and 4 teachers going. We are going to the northern part of mainland Honshu, more specifically, the Kurihara district in Miyagi prefecture. It is a 7D 7N trip and we will be staying in homes of local residents. Japan is one of my top 5 favourite countries to visit. It is only behind the first place London, England and 2nd place Germany.

Map of Japan, we are going to the 'Sendai' area about 350KM North-East of Tokyo.
Day 1: We are expected to meet at our very own Singapore Changi Airport Terminal 1 at 9pm on 11th June 2007. Our flight to Japan’s Narita Airport is set to depart at 11.25pm. We are taking All Nippon Airways (ANA) plane to Japan. I arrived rather early as I can’t hold out my excitement much longer. It has been a long time since I’ve last been on a flight out of the country. I arrived at Changi Airport at about 7.30pm, 1.5 hours early! Accompanying me was my mother, brother and my 18.5 KG luggage.

The first thing I did at the airport was to rush to the viewing mall to make sure that my plane was parking at our gate. Luckily, it was. There was still much time to spare, so we took the sky train to Terminal 2 for fun and slacked there for a while and then made our way back to T1. Yes, I have nothing better to do. But it helps in keeping myself from being so excited about the trip ahead of me.

At T1, many of my friends had arrived. Yagesh and Jun Hou were the first few people to contact me when they reached the airport and were rather surprised when I told them I had been at the airport for almost an hour. Yagesh had a bigger luggage than mine but it was considerably lighter than mine. Indeed, I had to sit on my luggage at home just to lock it. So what did I bring with me?

Actually, I brought tons of things, some of which are clearly unnecessary. This includes 9 pairs of clothing (top and bottom), some gifts for the people at Japan and errr... I can’t remember much already. So there, I basically brought stuffs that weren’t really needed, for example, the 9 pairs of clothing on a 7 day trip. Very kiasu =.=”

So it was 9pm and basically everyone was present except the (now 402) Aishah. Guess where was she? She was at Clementi Station waiting to board the MRT to Changi Airport! We waited for her to arrive and begun our check in. I was the first in line! They weighed my luggage and I was hoping that I would not have to pay for any overweight luggage fee. Thankfully, my luggage weighs 18.5kg which was lower than the maximum allowed of 20KG.

We got our tickets and I checked my seat number. It states 'Row 39, Seat E'. I've already researched on the plane we are taking and it is the Boeing 767-300. It is a medium sized plane and has 7 seats on each row with 2 aisle. In other words, the arrangement was
<2>--<3>--<2>. So seat ‘E’ will be the 5th seat from the left! This means my favourite seat in the plane, the window seat is gone! I have to seat beside the aisle. While most people prefer to seat beside the aisle for easier entry and exit, I would rather have a window seat than an aisle seat. We are seating at the back of the plane. Which means if there's turbulence, we will feel it more than the rest of the plane. Turbulence is going to be fun!

The ticket which shows my seat position, I will explain the "Restricted Item(s)" paper later on.

We were given some free time until 11pm where we had to meet just outside the glass doors that will lead us into the immigration counter. We waved goodbye to our parents and cleared immigration, I took one of their famous ‘Changi Airport Fox sweets’ on the way. Haha, nothing special about the sweet I must say. We were given some free time again =.=” and was told to meet at gate D36 at 11.20pm. So Yagesh, me and Jun Hou toured the transit mall. Jun Hou went to have his currency changed as he hadn’t done so earlier.

We took a slow stroll to gate D36, using the travellators as our mode of transport.

By passing gate D31 and D32
We arrived at gate D36 and met Xiao Dan, Aryani and Allen. I took some pictures outside the gate, take a look...

Japan Airlines (not our plane) Boeing 747-300 bound for Tokyo via Bangkok parking opposite our gate.
Our information screen with information about our flight on ANA, NH902 departing at 2325 hrs
Then, it’s time for us to enter the gate. We must go through a security check with the X ray machine first and guess what? They asked me if I have a scissors in my bag after my bag passed through the X ray machine. Indeed I have, their machine is powerful!
I brought my pencil case along and did not take out the scissors. I did not know you can’t bring a scissors onboard a flight. They told me to surrender my scissors and led me to some table where it is packed into this yellow envelope labelled as “RESTRICTED ITEM”. It was a rather scary moment because the feeling of being escorted by a security guard makes you feel like a criminal. They gave me a slip of paper and told me I could collect back my scissors when I arrive at Tokyo the next morning.

And I am not the only one from Queensway to get ‘caught’. I think 2 other people also had the same thing. Damn sad man, I have to go somewhere to collect the scissors and the problem is, they just said ‘somewhere’. How would I know where the 'somewhere' was to collect my scissors? Tokyo airport is so big! I thought that I would rather save myself the hassle of collecting my scissors back and just treat it as ‘lost’.

The yellow envelope labelled as "Restricted Item" is where my scissors had been kept after being confiscated.
We boarded to plane about 20mins late and took my seat. I was seated next to Paul and Alloy. There was trouble before the plane even moved. There was a strong stench of kerosene when the plane started its jet engine. I thought the plane was going to catch fire or something. But luckily, nothing happened and the plane was pushed back and made its way to the runway. YEAH! We are finally taking off for Tokyo!

The heavenly sound of the jet engine powering up is music to my ears. It is one of the best sounds on earth! Then, the feeling of getting pushed down into your seat when the plane takes off is almost like a roller coaster ride. We were served light snacks half an hour into the trip. They also gave us headphones so that we could use it for our movies. There was a small TV screen which can display movies, let us play games or simply listen to music. There are informative videos about Japan and how to clear customs when you arrive and stuffs like that.

The personal TV screen in every seat.
The remote control which you use to control the TV screen or play games with it.They gave out this headphone for our personal use.There was only 1 blockbuster movie and that was Ghostrider. I watched the show halfway but decided that it was boring and watched some other shows. I tried to sleep but I just feel too excited to sleep. So I carried on watching the show till dawn.

Day 2: It's dawn, more specifically, 4am. We were onboard a plane somewhere above the South China Sea and our destination, Tokyo is about 2.5 hours away. In S'pore, 4am would look no different from 10pm at night. But in this part of the world, 4am looks like 8am in S'pore, which means that the sun has risen fully. Breakfast was served at about 5am. As breakfast was being served, the inevitable happened. Turbulence! Yes, the plane was rocking in all directions, left to right, up and down. It may sound and feel frightening to some people, but I find it a joy when the plane hits turbulence.

However, I pitied the air stewardess who is serving us breakfast. They have to balance themselves and the tray they are holding in their hands when the whole plane is shaking about. So what’s for breakfast? Well, I can’t seem to remember the meal that well. But there were waffles with some sauce together with grapes and a choice of coffee or tea. I chose coffee so that I could stay away for the rest of the day. It was a challenge having breakfast as the plane was rocking about quite heavily.

Paul and Alloy, who were awake all night long watching movies fell asleep just before breakfast was served. They chose breakfast time, of all time to fall asleep. Strange =.=” I did not sleep all night too, but did not feel tired at all. Maybe the excitement has killed all of my tiredness. After breakfast, the captain of the plane spoke through the PA system with an unmistakable Japanese –English accent saying: “Ladies and Gentlemen, if you to look to your left, you would be able to see Mount Fuji, the highest mountain in Japan”.

As I was seated near the right hand side of the plane, I had to crane my neck up like a giraffe so I could see the famous mountain. It was indeed a sight to behold! The mountain is almost like a perfect cone shape and the top half of it is covered in snow! It is summer and there’s actually snow present on Mt Fuji! The sight of Mt Fuji also meant that we are very near our destination. Any minute now, we are going to touch down in Tokyo - Narita Airport and my life-long dream of going to Japan will be fulfilled! The flight attendant started distributing a immigration form for foreigners to fill in.

The plane then descended and my ears begun to pop due to the air pressure changes. The amazing thing about this plane is that they have an onboard camera mounted at the front of the plane. So you can switch the TV in front of you to the live camera mode and you will have the same view that the pilots have. Soon, we descended into the clouds and it went blurry on the screen. We emerged from the clouds soon after and I finally saw Japan for real. The runway was in sight and it was actually a fun and enlightening experience to see the plane land on the runway, through the pilot's view!

50ft...40ft...30ft...20ft...10ft... TOUCHDOWN! There was a loud thud and the jet engine’s thrust reversers sprung to life creating the unique low pitch growl. It was a slow crawl to our gates. Once the jet bridge was connected to our plane, we left the plane. But to my surprise, we have to return the headphones we used during the flight. I thought I could keep the headphone as a souvenir and for future use. Anyway, it was a rather uneventful 7 hour flight from Singapore, besides the breakfast time turbulence.

Our plane at Narita Airport after disembarking from the planeTravelling on the travellator in the direction of immigration7.45 am is the time we disembarked from the planeSignboard leading us to the arrival hall"Welcome to Japan"Baggage claim is right ahead!Clearing immigration took quite a while as there are 2 other flights that landed at the same time as ours and we have to squeeze through immigration together with them. Their immigration stamp is not exactly a stamp, but a sticker. This is the first time I have seen stickers being used as immigration stamps. Oh, one more thing! Vina left her monkey soft toy in the plane! She only found out when she is queueing at immigration. I don't know if she got her monkey back or not.

Japan's special sticker immigration stamp
After clearing immigration, we made our way to the baggage collection. I waited anxiously for my luggage because I heard cases of lost luggages before and I can't imagine what will happen if they lose my luggage. Luckily, after 5mins, I saw my luggage. I carried my luggage away from the conveyor belt. Then 'plak'! Something dropped from my luggage. I picked that item up to see what was it. To my greatest surprise, it was the yellow restricted item envelope which contained my scissors!

How on earth did they manage to locate my luggage amidst other luggages. I must say they are very efficient in terms of luggage handling. This means I don’t have to queue up at the invisible counter than I have never seen before to collect my scissors!

Unlike Singapore, there is no glass wall that separated the arrival hall and the baggage claim area. It was separated by a wall. This design is not as good as S'pore's as people 'outside' cannot see their friends or family 'inside' and vice versa. We were told to wear the Queensway Sec School blazers so that our tour guide could identify us when we entered the arrival hall.

When we emerge from tight security, there was a middle aged man standing in the middle holding a card that reads 'Welcome Queensway Sec School'. We gathered around him and he introduced himself to us. His name was Mr Ronnie Tan and he used to be a Singaporean until he emigrated to Japan some 10 years ago. It’s nice to have your fellow countryman as your tour guide in a totally unfamiliar country.

Here's our tour guide for the trip, Mr Ronnie Tan in black suit.It is 8:27am by the time we cleared immigration and stuffs. Roughly 25mins after we got down from the plane.
He led us out of the airport and towards our coach which is parked at the car park nearby. The weather was pleasant, there was a light breeze blowing, the air does not feel humid, unlike Singapore. The driver of the coach is already waiting for us by the time we got there. He helped us load our heavy luggages onto the bus and off we went!

Airport terminalWe loading our luggages onto the busOur bus number plate, 1008. Remember buy 4-D hor!The bus steering wheel =.=" I got nothing better to take pictures of. Haha!
In the airport's car park, I spotted several nice cars. Here are some of them.

Audi TT!There's a sporty red BMW Z4 amongst other nice cars.We left the airport using the North Exit. Yeah! Japan, here we come!
I was sitting next to Jun Hou in the bus. The first thing I noticed about Japan is how smooth their roads are. There are hardly any bumps. The trees are of a different shade of green compared to S’pore. Narita Airport is about 1 hour drive away from Tokyo. Their handphone network is fully 3G. This means that I cannot use my lowly 2.5G phone in Japan. I can only take pictures using the camera function. Japan is so advanced compared to S'pore! On the way to Tokyo, our tour guide introduced our bus driver to us. His name is Yamashita, he shares the same name with that infamous world war 2 Japanese general. Then he continued to talk about Japan’s geography. He later went on to explain how expensive it is to drive in Tokyo. He said our bus ride to Sendai will cost about ¥20 000 in tolls alone. ¥1000 is equals to $13 back in Singapore. Multiply that 20 times and our trip will cost $260 in tolls alone!

So what is that damn machine that is eating up our money? The tour guide explained that Japan has copied Singapore’s ERP system and renamed it into Electronic Toll Collection (ETC). It works like ERP except that the vehicle has to slow down to 20km/h to pass the barrier. The barrier will automatically lift when it senses the vehicle is approaching. At the same time, the computerised lady in your ETC transponder (placed in your vehicle) will read the amount of money deducted in Japanese. It was a joke listening the machine talk. But the tour guide explained that S’pore’s ERP is much better and cheaper. Why better? He says that we don’t have to slow down to pass the gantry, and it’s not compulsory for all vehicles to have that ETC system in their cars. Those without ETC will have to pay their tolls by cash manually, causing even more jams.

Japan's version of ERP - The money eating ETC gantry
Speaking of jams, we hit heavy traffic near Tokyo. It lasted 15mins. Tokyo's expressway are also surrounded by walls. I learnt later that these walls are sound barriers, it is designed to reflect noise away from nearby apartment blocks.

The walls beside the expressway, overlooking a residential area

More walls! Maybe we can name them as the 'Great Walls of Tokyo" =

Japanese are very enthusiastic about baseball, so its no surprise that I spotted baseball stadiums like these...
We also passed by Carefour on the way to Tokyo
Due to time constraints, we were not going to visit Tokyo itself, but we somehow manage to pass the Tokyo Disneyland. I took a picture of the most visible structure of Tokyo Disneyland - the Ferris wheel
Shortly after we passed Tokyo, we had our first toilet break at one of the service stops along the expressway. The air outside the bus was rather cold, even in summer! The sun was shinning brightly but we did not perspire at all! We were told to change into our school uniform as the Mayor made a last minute request to welcome us at his city. The rest stop is far better than the ones in M’sia. It is equipped with TONS of vending machines. Products they sell includes mash potatoes, kebab sticks, ice cream, coffee, burger, fish balls, meat balls, cigarettes, batteries and lots more! If that isn’t enough, there is a food centre, and a restaurant too! Their toilets are incredibly big!

Exiting the expressway for our first rest stopLook at the number of vending machines they have in a small area! Insane!Vending machine country! They even sell batteries in vending machines!
Our coach parking at the rest stopThe beautiful mountain behind the rest stop
Our second toilet break also happens to be our lunch time. We had our lunch at one of the service stops along the expressway again. There was there Japanese restaurant that sells, Japanese food! I ordered some curry chicken with rice. Their curry is very different to ours. Their curry is not spicy but it is very thick. I have a feeling they added lots of coconut milk in the curry. I also ordered coke float as my drink. The curry chicken rice serving was huge. I could not finish all of it thus I donated my left over food to our resident dinosaur – Ting Wei. He eats like a dinosaur man! Before I gave him my share, he already finished 3 other plates of rice + meat. Luckily, the meal was included in the package price. If we have to pay for this meal, I would be broke by the end of the trip!

The entrance to the restaurant, there are so many life-like wax figures on display!There's this beautiful tall mountain behind the rest stop. How majestic!So far the trip was very good, the only thing that disapointed me was the lack of fast cars. I have not seen a fast car zooming past us for the whole trip so far. It was another 3 hours bus ride to Kurihara. Mr Gary Tan told us that we were running late and we have to by-pass Sendai City. So sad, I was expecting to see high tech stuffs at Sendai City. We reached Kurihara town soon after. We were given some time to do some shopping at this supermarket called MaxValu. I bought some sweets and visited the game shop. The game shop sells lots of games that S’pore doesn’t have. They even sell those old Nintendo cassettes. Here are some pictures at MaxValu.

MaxValu entrance signMaxValu supermarket buildingSome sign that I don't understandI like Japan number plate design, neat and cool! (White is for cars, yellow for small cars/trucks with engine capacity below 700cc)

Wow! Subaru 4 wheel drive! Must be some fast car...?

But no! It is this Kei* truck. Wonder why such a small truck needs 4 wheel drive? *Kei stands for tiny in Japanese.The food stand in the middle of the carpark. It's closed that day. So I don't know what they sellWe arrived at our ‘welcome party’. We are greeted by many people, these includes parents, lots of students, old grandmothers and grandfathers, and last but not least, the mayor! We really felt like VIPs because lots of students stood by the walk way clapping away as they welcomed us. We entered the function room where we met our host families. Mine was a 30+ year old woman. We interacted well, she spoke a little English and we learnt that she has 2 kids. Then there’s this ang moh guy who said that he will be visiting us during our home stay to play PS2 with us. How cool!

Then, we have some rubbish formal ceremony where both national anthems were sung and there were speeches made by both countries’ representative. The speeches was quite long and I think its quite bullshitty. Whatever, the best part was the food. It was 5pm already and I’m afraid if I ate too much I would not be able to finish dinner later on. But the food was too tempting to reject. There were cakes, ice creams, cold dish such as lobsters, cherry, jelly, pudding.... and the list goes on and on. We soon left for our hotels after a warm reception by the Japanese. They were really polite and they would keep bowing to us. We boarded the bus with full stomachs.

Welcome sign for us!'Welcome party' on the stage

Our hotel was on a mountain top on Mount Kurikoma. This mountain is actually a volcano which last erupted in the 1950s. Along the way, we saw countless plots of paddy fields. The tour guide told us that this region is famous for the Japanese rice and that most of Japan’s rice comes from this area. This explains the numerous paddy fields. Going up the mountain slope was scary, the road does not have street lamps and the road was twisty and windy. It didn’t help that it started to rain halfway up the mountain. It was pitch black outside. The only thing that guided the driver was the bus's headlights. Thankfully, we arrived at our hotel in one piece.

Paddy fields like these exist in abundance in the rural country side
A fast flowing river - such a river cannot be found in S'poreEntrance to our hotelThe weather was very cold. The wind was blowing strongly and the rain was making it hard for us to unload our luggages. Once in the hotel, we were informed that we have a specially prepared dinner waiting for us. Gosh! It’s only an hour before that I ate and now we have dinner? I doubt I can finish the food. The hotel has it’s own arcade corner where there are games like Battlegear 3, some drum game and a few more. The arcade is not very big, but nonetheless, it is a good form of entertainment when we are bored.

A brochure of our hotel - Heilsam KurikomaHot spring (Onsen) in our hotel!We checked into our rooms. My room was room 211 on the 2nd floor. I shared room with Jun Hou, Alloy, Paul, Yagesh and Gary. We were expecting beds when we opened the door to our room. But instead, there are 3 futon mattresses laying on the floor. It looks like an uncomfortable place to sleep on. The mattresses looks thin.

The 2nd storey hotel corridorMy room, 221The futon mattresses we slept on. It was surprisingly more comfortable than we expectedThe view from the 2nd storey of our room - looking down to the 1st storeyThe list of television channelsOur room's keyFire escape sign in broken English. It reads: "Please confirm an emergency exit beforehand in a lower figure. If there was able to be some suspicious thing please inform the reception desk."There are 2 levels in the room, so we rushed up to the 2nd floor and found 2 normal beds there. Paul and Alloy decided to be bullies and booked their beds. Heck them. We then changed into this traditional Japanese attire called Yukata? I’m not sure what is it called. But it is really awkward wearing it. We are supposed to wear nothing but our underwear beneath it. We are supposed to tie it to our waist so it does not falls off. And, if we were to sit down normally, our crotch will be exposed! LOL!

Then we met at the dinning room where traditional items are placed on our tables. We sat on the floor and Paul accidentally exposed his crotch as he sat down. So funny! The food was just fabulous. There are 11 different bowls/plates in front of us. There was egg, steamed rice, sashimi, prawns, fish, mini style steamboat, scallops.... the lot of them. Considering that we just ate, it was rather difficult to eat all of them. I tried the Sashimi and it was quite nice. But it gave me stomach problems the next morning =.=”

The wonderful spread of food for dinner!Group photo in the dinning roomMs Leong and Ms Annie Tan in the YukataMr Tan and Mr Justin in the Yukata too! Notice the arrangement of the tables and 'chair' and the quantity of food available. That 2 people beside the teachers are me and Jun Hou wearing that horribly uncomfortable Yukata suit.The 5 Japan/Singaporean SamuraisAfter dinner, it was bathing time! Now, you may think that we have our own showers in the bedroom. But sadly, we don’t. We all bathe at this common bath area which also happens to be a hot spring. We have to strip totally naked before we can get in the hot spring. Now, before your mind starts to wonder wildly, the hot springs are gender separated. There's even a milk vending machine inside the changing area!

Milk vending machine sold at ¥100 each(SGD$1.30) Quite cheap eh?The hot spring is located at the basement. We have to strip outside the room before we enter the bath area, then we have to rinse ourselves before entering the hot spring. It was rather embarrassing entering the room for the 1st time. Seeing naked guys walking around was terrible =.=” But whatever, when you immerse yourself in the hot spring, you will forget about all the awkwardness around you. There are 3 hot spring pools, 2 indoors and 1 outdoors. The indoors water are cooler than the outside one. But the weather outside is super cold.

Entrance to the women's hot spring (Note, picture is NOT taken by me)There's even a vending machine in the changing room. Talk about vending machine madness!I prefer the outdoor pool as the temperature is balanced. Cooling on the top half of your body, warm/hot at the bottom. But I found out that staying in the hot water for more than 15mins could prove uncomfortable. I could not stand the heat after 15 mins and got out of the room. After that, I felt faint and could not think straight. Even Yagesh, Allen and Jun Hou felt the same. I can even hear my heart beating loudly. After that experience, we always reminded ourselves not to stay in the water for too long.

There's more vending machine madness too! There's countless of drinks vending machine. There's also vending machines selling Sake (Japanese rice beer), cup noodles, ice cream, milk, soft toys and tidbits! It was 11pm already but instead of sleeping, people in room 211 were playing PS2 that Paul brought along. We played games like Burnout and some guitar game.

Day 3: I woke up to a very bright, sunlit room. I panicked because Mr Gary Tan said that we are supposed to meet at the lobby at 7am in the morning. The sky that time looks more like 8am. I looked at my watch to confirm the time, thankfully its only 4.50am. Thanks to the sashimi I ate the previous night, I am having runs now. I kept making trips to the toilet. The weather was very cold too. Luckily, the toilet bowl seat was heated, or else I would be freezing. Paul and Alloy had difficulties waking up because they refused to sleep the previous night, preferring to spend their energy talking crap with each other which really annoyed the rest of us. To stop my runs, Jun Hou gave me a pill which worked! Just before 7am, my runs stopped and I can spend the day without worrying about the toilet.

At 7am, we made our way down to the lobby to have breakfast, Wary of my stomach problems, I refused to have breakfast fearing another diarrhoea outbreak. Breakfast was cooked fish, some seaweed and rice with miso soup. Somehow or rather, Mr Justin got to know about my stomach problems and the news spread to other teachers =.=” Our destination today is a nearby river where we have to do fieldwork. Before setting off, we collected our packet lunch consisting of sandwiches and a Qoo bottled drink – courtesy of our friendly hotel staffs.

Look! Those small white patches on the mountains are snow! Summer snow!We took a 15min bus ride to the nature reserve. We need to hike about 1KM into the forest before reaching the river. We have to conquer several obstacles such as broken pathways, very steep staircases, and leaps over small streams. It was almost an adventure walk. Finally, we reached the river. There is a waterfall just upstream and it was indeed a sight to behold. The waterfall is definitely much larger than the Kota Tinggi one. The river is littered with rocks and stones, some of which are as big as a van.

The narrow and steep gravel pathway heading towards the waterfallFun in the water!We were given tasks to do and to help us store our data, we were given laptops. We had to measure the velocity of the river and the shape of the riverbed and so on. This means we have to enter the river. I cautiously put one foot in the river, then all of a sudden, it seems that your leg went numb and you can’t feel anything. I immediately took my foot out of the water. The water is super icy cold. I have never felt water this cold before. By the end of 15 mins, nobody dared to enter the water. Then some braved souls lead the way and soon, others followed suit.

As you can see, balancing in the river was hard work. The current is quite strong and we relied on wooden sticks and branches to balance ourselves. But that didn't stop Hiromi from falling face first into the water! =) After our packet lunch, we had a long and steep hike back to the bus. We were all exhausted by the time we got to the bus. We headed back to the hotel for a quick wash up. By then, the room was cleaned up, and the tatami mattress has disappeared! Replacing it was a table with a tea set placed on it. we weren't in the mood for tea so we left those things alone. I have to praise the Japanese people for their honesty. We left our valuables like phones and stuffs in the open and they are left untouched! They would have probably be stolen if I were in M'sia or something. Great job!

Next destination: Kurihara town. It was a 20mins drive to the town. We arrived at the town council and were told to explore the town and meet back in 2 hours. We were divided into groups and my group consist of me, Aryani, Allen, Jun Hou, Natasha and Hiromi. The town is very quiet, we were given a map with Japanese characters scribbled all over. We got lost in no time. Thankfully, Hiromi knows how to speak a little Japanese and sought help from locals who have little knowledge of the English language.

This is the pathetic map they gave us for navigation. With all those Japanese characters, can you decipher it?
The Kurihara town council

We passed by the now defunct train station/bus terminal, the train history museum and a power station! We decided to slack a little and went shopping. I was very thirsty and bought myself some chocolates and iced coffee. The chocolates are just heavenly, it was one of the best chocolates I tasted! The ice coffee was even better! The coffee taste just lingers in your mouth even after you finish drinking. Japan do know how to make good food/beverages. The shop keepers were friendly even though they spoke Japanese all the time. We also visited the train museum to look at old things such as train tickets and pictures.

The defunct train station
The town was rather quiet as there were hardly any cars. Electrical cables dangle loosely over the streets, I wonder if there was a thunderstorm, what would happen to the whole town.

Old style Halogen traffic lights with messy electrical cables dangerously laid overheadTheir streets are quite narrow by any standardsEven drain covers are nicely decorated! This one shows 2 pony This drain cover even has colour! The Japanese are very meticulous about their image I guess?Look! In vending machine country, everything is sold in vending machines, cigarettes are no exception

It's quite cheaply priced too, only ¥300 each. This equates to SGD 4.20!

We also passed by their Police post. Nice Police car they have. I suppose it is a Toyota Rush. The Police officer is also very disciplined, standing there for hours at a time! Japanese people are very respectable!Their taxis are the same as ours - Toyota Crown. Except their engines are different and the wing mirrors are in a different positionYou may find this familiar, the Initial D petrol station - EneosHow can I neglect cars? The fabulous Nissan 300SX (old Fairlady) without licence plateToyota SupraAnd lastly, a Mazda RX-7Mr Gary & Ms Annie TanBeautiful flowers by the side of the streetAfter our explorations, we headed back to the hotel to do our last minute preparations for our first nightly presentation. It was a very rushed job as we had only 45mins to do a presentation about our activities that day. Before presentation, it was our usual grand dinner, the meal is almost the same as the day before except that the rice somehow became purple o.0 Presentation time! Each team presented their findings and I think my team performed the worse. However, there was some hilarious moment when some of the team’s laptop went flat because of the heavy usage at the river. Before each laptop went flat, there would be beeps as a warning. It was rather funny watching each laptop die one after another. The presentation was the worst part of the trip, it dragged on till 11pm and by then, nobody had the mood to bathe.

Our team decided to redo our presentation and decided to camp overnight to complete it. To keep myself awake after a very tiring day, I bought myself a 250ml can of espresso from one of the vending machines. The effect of the espresso was very strong, I just drank 2 sips and I was rejuvenated. I decided to keep the remaining espresso in the fridge for future use. We ate cup noodles to keep us awake too.

Since our hotel has 2 storeys, Natasha and Hiromi occupied the 2nd floor while the rest of us stayed downstairs. Whenever. when we need help we would shout our questions to them and they would reply us. Then Aryani said that it seems that we are talking to God and God answered our question. I decided to play along with her and climbed up the stairs to get something from them. As I was climbing up the stairs, I said “I am climbing up the stairway to heaven, God! Please receive me with grace”. LOL! It was quite funny then. By 4am, we completed our work! But by then, it was sunrise and nobody could sleep anymore. It was a long and tiring day/night.

Day 4: Thankfully, I did not have runs this morning and I ate breakfast in Japan for the first time. It was a filling breakfast. Here's what I had for breakfast.Today, our destination is the chrysanthemum flower farm and a paper making session. At the chrysanthemum farm, we were taught how to plant the seeds of the chrysanthemum plant. To make things even more scary, the local television crew will be filming us for the news that same evening. Wow, we were indeed treated like VIPs/celebrities. Maybe their town does not receive tourist regularly that’s why they are making such a big fuss about our arrival. We planted the plants and as a reward, the owner treated us to a traditional soda drink from Japan. It taste a little bit like Sprite and 7UP combined. The bottle was unique too, it is made of glass and it’s oddly shaped.

Planting the chrysanthemum plant, (note the TV crew in the background)We had lunch in a very scenic setting. It was a park that consists of a children’s playground, a very long metal slide and a natural river. So what’s on the menu for lunch? It was called Onigiri, it is basically rice wrapped in seaweed. It was surprisingly quite filling. After lunch, some of us went to play the metal slide. Sitting on the slide was a big no-no. The metal bars will give you a score butt after the trip down. We found a better way to slide down, squat on the metal rollers and it will slide you down easily! We tried sliding down together, it was great fun. We felt like children again.

The scenic river with fast flowing waterA group photo at the parkA signboard indicating that there are lots of parks/garden in this areaNext stop is the paper making 'factory'. I thought it was a factory until the bus arrived in front of a house. I thought that the driver must have made a mistake, how can paper be made in such a small place? As it turns out, that house is indeed the paper making ‘factory’ we are visiting. It is owned by a 70+ year old man. He showed us the raw materials needed to make paper and also showed us the various steps of paper making. Now, let the pictures do the talking.

The paper making houseA very big water tank for such as small house. I guess water is needed in abundance to make paper?His vehicles aren't really considered a vehicle anymore. Just look at the horrible condition of his truck and tractor =.="The 70 year old man showing us the tree barks that will be used to make paper

The paper making 'machine'1st step: Know your equipment2nd step: Dip the wooden frame into the solution 3rd step: Squeeze the bag dry (what for?) 4th step: Flatten the paper5th step: Let it dry 6th step: Remove the bamboo covering

Vola! It's done.All these while, the TV crew was filming the old man. Then after the demonstration, the TV crew interviewed some people.

Allen entering the hall of fame!Some Sec 2 girl being interviewed. The man in white on the right is our tour guide Mr Ronnie TanI was bored so I explored the field near the house and found this flower than I've never seen before. It's amazing how the macro mode in my camera phone can take such clear close up shots!Later, the old man personally gave out 2 pieces of his homemade paper to each of us. The texture is very different to normal paper. This paper is more rough compared to normal paper.

Group photo with the 70 year old manNext, we visited the archaeology museum. It was quite boring, there’s nothing much to see.

A statue of someone 'great'An ancient pot or vaseOur presentation night was much better than the previous one. So after the presentation, we all went for a bath. While walking back to the room with Jun Hou, I met with a 'ghostly' encounter. I saw this reflection of a man in ancient Japanese robe, he stood very still and was staring at something pasted onto the wall. I was scared like mad! I immediately screamed out loud and at the same time jumped. Thankfuly, the 'ghost' turned out to be Gary. He was wearing that Yukata robe thingy which made him look like those ancient samurai ghost. Jun Hou kept laughing at my over reaction to the 'ghost'. We cooled down outside the hotel. As it was night time, the air was cold and it is made even colder by the strong winds.

Day 5: We had breakfast as usual. After breakfast, I had time to spare and spent it on the Battlegear 3 game at the arcade corner, it was quite an easy game to play. I beat everybody who tried to compete with me Haha. Then there's this drum game where you beat the drum to the beat of the music. Beating the drum was tiring, but nonetheless it was a fun game.

Next destination: The town's (forgot the name) Junior High school. Remember the TV crew filmed us the day before? On the bus to their Junior High School, the tour guide told us a very amusing news. Apparently we are on the news that same evening. The bus has this very cool TV which can magically reveal itself! Then, we saw ourselves planting plants and making paper! Yeah! The whole of Japan knows that we are visiting already. I don’t know why they made such a big fuss about our visit? But whatever, it’s still cool to appear on TV.

Guess what is this? A ladder to climb out in case of an emergency?No! It's a very cool television! This is where we watched ourselves appear on TV It was a wet an rainy day. The weather was quite cold. After a short drive, we finally arrived at the school! There was no special welcome party because the whole school is already having lessons. We had to remove our shoes and wear their slippers before we can enter the school. The school is quite small. It has only 2 storeys are 7 classes. We gathered in an empty classroom where the school’s principal greeted us. His English was the most fluent of all the Japanese people I met during this trip!We were treated to a light snack consisting of a bottled of water and Hagen Daz ice cream! Ice cream during a cold and rainy day eh? Nice idea!

The school's cute looking principal

After our light snack, we headed to the hall for our last minute preparation for our performance which is a cultural dance item. There are basically 3 groups, one Malay, one Chinese and Indian dance. I so happen to be in the Indian dance group. So after our last minute preparations, we headed back to the classroom and waited for the school to gather at the hall. Speaking of the hall, their hall is quite big for the school’s population. The hall is ¾ of Queensway’s school hall but they only have 70 students while we have 1400! That’s a lot of space for 70 people!

Finally, we made a grand entrance to the hall which filled with Japanese students. We were warmly welcomed by them. Yet again, the TV crew was present to film this very 'special' event. There were a few speeches made by both parties. Then they demonstrated their baseball skills for us. It was quite entertaining watching them play baseball. They seem very enthusiastic about it. Soon, it was our turn to perform for them. We did not use their stage because it was thought that the stage would not engage the audience because it’s too far away. Instead, we performed on the ground. It was quite nerve wrecking dancing in front of a small group of people. After our performance, we exchanged gifts. I gave them a Merlion keychain while they gave me this:

It is a cup/mug made of porcelainThen the teachers from both sides presented each other with gifts of appreciation and stuffs. It’s all very formal and nothing interesting. The TV crew who is constantly filming us made us even more nervous as any dosing off situations will be caught on camera and shown on national television!!! Japan, being a polite country will definitely not like people dosing off during formal ceremonies. Thankfully, I managed to keep myself wide awake, especially when the stupid camera man go turn the camera towards us.

After that formal thingy, it GAME TIME! We formed 2 teams. The first team is called TEAM SINGAPORE! So obviously the next team is TEAM JAPAN! It is a very simple game. There is a basket and there are many balls on the floor. The team who throws in the most balls into the basket within a given time wins! It may sound lame and stuffs but it was quite interesting when you are actually playing it. We are even featured on the newspaper playing the simple ball game! Take a look!

We are being featured on the newspaper playing ball games!A more close up look of the picture =)Dated: 16 June 2007I was amazed by the utensils that they given out, it is a combination of both a fork and a spoon! This is a very good invention as it reduces the hassle of having to use both hands to eat. No wonder Japan students are so clever, they eat with one hand and read a book on the other. Haha! The food tasted quite bland, it was rice with fish cakes and vegetable soup. Drink was some yogurt drink? Or was that for dessert? It is a whole new experience of eating in a classroom formally (not those finger food like we eat in class secretly back in S’pore).

This is the almost exact same thing that I used to eat during school lunch. A combination of a a fork and a spoon. The only difference is that plastic fork/spoon are used in school insteadAfter lunch, we were divided into 3 groups. One group shall stay in school and learn traditional puppets play? The 2nd team shall leave the school to have a traditional Japanese tea ceremony and lastly the 3rd team will leave the school too to go drum beating! Thankfully, I was sorted to the 3rd team. Drum beating sounds fun! We left on the bus and headed to the tea ceremony venue first and then dumped the peeps there while we head over to the local community centre where drums of various sizes await us.

There is no pictures of the drums, sorry! The students taught us how to tighten the screws around the drums so that it would sound perfect. Communication was a big, big problem for us. They speak very little English and we spoke/understood very little Japanese. Other than that, I had great fun. We started with the smallest drums first, then followed by the biggest one. I had problems holding the drumsticks correctly at first. But I soon got the hang of it and they started to teach us how to play the drum with stylo milo actions. It was really hard! After countless of tries, nobody from S’pore got all of the actions right. Still, great fun!

On the way back, the Japanese girls seemed very attracted to Alloy. They kept calling him hentai which means ‘pervert’ in Japanese for no apparent reason. It was very funny to watch Alloy being so frustrated at his new name. He is also frustrated by the fact that he does not know word that the students spoke except for the word ‘hentai’ which was used every 3 seconds. Crazy Japanese! The craziness continued all the way until we left.

We toured their classes while they are having lessons. Their classrooms are about the same size as ours. But their tables and chairs are all wooden and very small. Their uniforms are also quite stylish. The teacher was teaching Algebra on the blackboard. It was taught in Japanese and I could hardly understand what the teacher is saying. The students are incredibly engrossed in their lessons, despite the group of us making a commotion behind them (shame on us), they still did not turn back and look. This is something we can learn from them.

The fat teacher teaching the class Algebra. He looks and speaks like Kuok Loon! =)Even though we were making a din at the back of the class, not one of the students look distracted. We must learn from them! The teacher teaching the class Japanese languageSome of them fooling around
It was time to leave. All the students and teachers stood in one line and we shake almost all 70 hands! I have never touched so many hands in my life before! They can’t bear to see us go, I kind of miss them too but I am getting really annoyed by their craziness. Even when the bus left the school, some of them tried chasing after the bus! Do they really like us that much? I guess so bah!

The goodbyes. The students in their (ugly) PE attire standing in a row to shake our handsWe headed back to our hotel for what would be our last ever night there. It was very saddening to leave the hotel because the staffs are very hospitable and very helpful. Most importantly, they did very good room service without touching our valuables. Even my espresso (which by the way, is still in the fridge after the 5th day) is not touched. To celebrate our last day at this fabulous hotel, Mr Ronnie Tan said that he’s going to treat us to a Karaoke session! I thought he was joking. I don’t see any TV anywhere (besides the bedroom) that can hold Karaoke sessions.

But I also forgot I’m in Japan and in Japan, anything is possible. We entered the dinner hall for the final time and I was shocked when I saw this robot like machine in front of the room. Upon closer inspection, it is a Karaoke machine! It has a built in TV which the singer will use as a lyrics guide and 2 sets of microphone. COOL!!!!! So, after our usual grand dinner, with stomachs bloated, we started our Karaoke session.

At first, no one wants to sing. Then some brave soul (I forgot who) went up and sang. Then Hiromi sung some Japanese song together with Natasha. It was very touching to see them sing a sad love song (I think). Then, Aryani and Arwin did a duet. And finally, the best part of the whole Karaoke session. This guy called Arwin sang ‘Uptown girl’. It was amazing. He was very lively and his actions were entertaining, though sometimes it looked rather strange and funny. Everybody was laughing their ass off. Even the teachers like Gary Tan and Annie went to join Arwin in singing. It was one of the heartiest moments of the trip! Great fun! There will not be such an experience ever again! It is very sad thinking that we cannot go back and have fun again. Sobs

Hiromi singing a Japanese song on the karaoke machine Hirmomi and Natasha 'duet-ing'Aryani and Arwin duetsMs Annie Tan doesn't want to miss the fun too!Arwin with his hilarious singing of 'Uptown Girl'It was so funny that everyone is laughing their ass off. Look at Mr Gary Tan on the right =)After that wonderful karaoke session, we headed to the hot springs for the very last time. It was very saddening to know that we will not be coming back to this place ever again. After bath, most of us played arcade because we could not bear to part with everything in the hotel, which includes the arcade too! Within just 4 days, there seems to be lots of emotions attached to this hotel. The staffs are very friendly and honest, the facilities are great and last but not least, the food is just awesome! That night, it was quite difficult to sleep and thus, I watched some late night TV. Guess what I saw? I saw a Japan news programme which was interviewing Japan's own F1 driver Takuma Sato about his chances in that week's USA Grand Prix. After that, there was Red Bull airplane racing. Yagesh and Jun Hou were quite irritated by the noise made by the TV and asked me to go upstairs.

Day 6: I woke up and found a slip of paper underneath the door. It was a bill 'demanding' payment for a 'Majong Set'! Appalled, I questioned everybody in the room to see who on earth ordered a majong set. I do not want to contribute money or owe the hotel something for the things I did not buy. As it turns out, Paul and Alloy bought the Majong Set. They said they have paid already and that slip of paper is a receipt. I was skeptical at first because the slip of paper was clearly labelled as 'BILL'. But whatever, at least I don't have to pay for something that I did not buy, I am satisfied.

We did last minute packing of our luggages and left the hotel room with a very heavy heart. We met at the lobby and had our last breakfast there. We reluctantly waved goodbye to the hotel staff who, was all standing in one line waving goodbye to us in typical Japanese hospitality.

Ms Annie Tan posing outside the hotel

Today, our destinations are the mayor's office and our highlight of our trip, a one night stay with a Japanese family at their house! We had difficulty driving down the mountain road because the road was only fit for 1/half cars and the bus would have to give way if a car passes by on the other side. But this time, our obstacle was not a car, it a freaking huge bus! We were stuck in that mountain road jam for about 15 minutes as both drivers skilfully manoeuvred their buses pass each other with millimetres to spare. It was one scary moment as our bus could have rolled down the cliffs as there are NO safety barriers.

On the way there, we spotted some amusing buildings.

A pink house that actually looks more like a doll house. Diva should consider this house as his dream home =0Yellow hat! What a cool name for a tyre shop.It was an hour drive to downtown Kurihara whereby we arrived at the mayor's office. The mayor's office, compared to the other buildings in the area is actually quite grand. There are 5 storeys in the building and the first thing we saw when we entered the building was the vending machine corner. WOW! There's like 8 vending machines in just one corner. I don't know why do they need so many vending machines =.=" There, a woman picked us up and led us to the 3rd floor by - STAIRS! So cheapskate!

Vending machines spree!Random shots of the teachers chattingWe arrived at the 3rd floor with many curious pairs of eyes starring at us. These eyes belongs to the office workers from the taxation department. These people are in charge of all the tax related matters in the district. She explained that the manager sits at the head of a row of table and then followed by his subordinates. She then pointed to the ceiling and explained that the white box (or panel) indicates weather the important people are in the building. If they are present, their names will appear, if they are not, it will go off. Now, how cool is that? If only they could implement that system in our school. Then we know which teachers will not be in school that day.

The hardworking employees of the tax department. That white box hung on the ceiling at the centre is the name display that I've just explained.After the tour round the tax department, the woman brought us to the meeting room to meet the mayor. While waiting for the mayor to arrive, she finally introduced herself. She is the mayor's secretary. The mayor arrived at greeted us warmly. We then learnt how to fold origami papers. The papers they gave out are very nice (and expensive too I guess). Then the mayor personally gave out gifts to all of us.

The meeting roomThis beautiful miniature fan given out by the mayor himself! We left the mayors office and headed to the meeting place whereby we will meet our host families for the day. On the bus, we were shown the previous night's news. And as expected, we featured again! This time, I can clearly see myself on TV! So cool! By now, the whole of Japan should already know we S'poreans are here.

Look! We are on the news!

We arrived at our meeting place and met our host families who will take us in for the night. There is an allocation of 2 people to one host family. We were all very nervous when we all met them. Communication was a BIG BIG BIG problem for most of us. They spoke very very little English while we spoke very very little Japanese. I wonder how are we going to spend the day if we can't communicate? My partner was Jun Hou and we said 'Hi' in English to our host family and they replied 'Hi' back in English.

Our host families was this 30+ year old mother with 2 sons, one is 3 years old and the older one is 5 years old. She introduced to us their names. I can only recall the older boy, his name is Kento. She led us to her car which was a navy blue Nissan X-Trail. From there, we set off for a 10 minute ride to their house. In the car Kento was very interested about us. He kept asking questions in JAPANESE! Obviously I don't understand what he is saying and I just nodded my head to whatever he said.

My constant nodding of the head made Kento look very confused as I have obviously not answer his questions. He then turn his attention to a toy which he took out from the central console of the car. It is a toy that makes some sound when you press a button. It is a very kiddy toy for kids. He seemed very keen to let me play with it. Being a good guest, I pretended to like it alot =.=" Jun Hou was all along laughing as me as I was stuck with Kento and his kiddy behaviour. Kento only focused his attention on me but not Jun Hou. Jun Hou was too quiet, Kento tried communicating with Jun Hou but Jun Hou just kept quiet. Anti social sia! Maybe I am better at handling kids bah. I have 5 cousins under the age of 7, of course I know how to handle small kids =)

Finally, after what feels like eternity, we reached their house. Their house is a 2 storey house and has a gravel garden entrance. There was no gate at all! I am very surprised at this because the house is very easily accessible. I believe they trust their neighbours so well that installing a gate was unnecessary. The house is elevated from the ground probably due to earthquake reasons. Their father at the garden and he showed us to our 'room'. It is not really a room because there is basically nothing in it. There's just a tatami bamboo floor and nothing else. I guess they must have cleared the mess for us or something.

We also met their grandmother and grandfather. They were very friendly and asked us if we needed a drink, if we are hungry or not and all the typical hospitable Japanese questions. Grandmother said that lunch would be ready in a while. Meanwhile, we have some visitors who had just arrived. It turned out to be their next door neighbour. They are a 13 year old boy and his grandfather. The neighbour's grandfather was really good and enjoyable to communicate with. Even though none of us know what we are trying to say, we just had this special 'something' for the neighbour's grandfather.

His grandson introduced himself as a 13 yr old from the same school we had visited a few days ago. Too bad I forgot his name. Then he showed us the superiority of Japan's handphone. He said that since we have a language barrier between us, why not use the translator function in his phone? I was dumbfounded when I saw the function. It is a really ingenious method of communicating. Finally I get to understand what he's trying to ask me and Jun Hou all along - our age.

The, the grandmother told us that lunch was ready, I wanted to find the dinning table but she asked us to go out to the garden. In the garden, there was this big bamboo structure.

This is the big bamboo structure. It will be clearer if you seen this picture first and then read the explanationThe grandfather then let water rundown the bamboo 'stream' - just like a river. He then placed some noodles at the top of the 'river' and let it flow down. At the bottom of the 'river', we are supposed to use chopsticks and grab the noodle. I was told that this was the traditional method of eating noodles there. It was great fun trying the catch the "runway noodle"! LOL! So, what happened if we missed? Well, there is a bucket at the end of the river to catch hold of any stray noodles. Then, out of nowhere, the small 3 yr old kid toppled the bamboo structure as he was running aimlessly around. He got a spanking by the grandfather for causing trouble.

Just then, the most dreaded moment. The BLODDY TV crew was at the entrance and is going to interview us! Bloody hell, I've never been interviewed on TV before and to be interviewed in a foreign country is worse. Luckily, if I made any blunders, most people viewing the interview would not know because their English suck. I noticed the Japanese camera man like to place their camera very very near their point of view. The camera man literally placed the camera on my face when I was being interviewed. They asked me, through an interpretator subjective questions such as "How do you find Japanese lifestyle?" I'm like OMG, what happens if I say something wrongly? What will happen to me and stuffs?

I answered cautiously, something along the line of " I think Japan has a very different culture to S'pore. The pace of life in the rural area is much slower compared to S'pore and the people here are much more polite". I guess this is the best answer I could give without embarrassing myself on national TV, or worse, offend the locals. They turned their attention to Jun Hou and he did not answer as well as me. I forgot what question they asked Jun Hou. After the interview, the filmed us catching the runaway noodle and eating them. LOL, so lame! The noodle should be eaten with a sauce which taste salty and 'rice-cy'. There's more too, there was the Japanese version of friend prawns, rice ball with sotong and much much more. There are just too many food for us to finish and we feel bad that the food are going to go to waste if we don't eat them. Thus, we forced ourselves to eat.

After lunch, the TV crew left and the neighbour's grandfather brought along some bicycles from his house and asked if we would like to ride it around the neighbourhood? We obviously agreed, cycling beats staying at home and doing nothing! He called his grandson to lead the way and off we go! The first thing I tried doing was to change gear and I am really amazed by the smoothness of the gear change. There is no rattling of cogs, no stuck gears and no jerking. The best thing of all, it changes instantly, just like a car's automatic gearbox! Japan do really know how to make good gears. It was so fun changing gears that I kept changing over and over again. Normally I don't do that on a bicycle but changing gear on this bike is just too fun. Even Jun Hou agreed!

We cycled about 2KM to the nearby community centre. Then, the grandfather brought us to the video room where we watched super kiddy shows like Tom & Jerry. I was very bored by then and suggested that we cycle around the neighbourhood some more. My request was granted and we cycled to the nearby baseball field where a game of baseball was being played. We stood there and watched for a while before cycling back to the house. Along the way, I witnessed how friendly Japanese are. They greeted one another whenever they met! Even though they are strangers, they still greet!

Back home, the father whipped out a Japanese - English translation book and flipped through the pages frantically. He then showed us a phrase - "Do you want to go for a drive?" OF COURSE! Driving in Japan, how cool is that? We waited for the father to collect his car. I was expecting the same Nissan Xtrail that we arrived in. But no, it was another car. It was a Nissan something, can't really remember, it's a MPV with 7 seats and the doors open and close automatically with a touch of a button - SO COOL! Me, Jun Hou, the mother and her 2 kids and the neighbours son got into the car. The mother did the driving. She was super cautious while going around town. She stopped at every junction even though there are obviously no cars around. Women driver - Haiz!

Our first stop was the gas station, their gas station is so cool! The gas pump will read out the price of the petrol after you've finished pumping. Japan is so high tech lor! Next, we went to the lily park. It was rather boring as I am not a fan of flowers. Nonetheless, playing with the 2 small kids were fun. I even piggy bag one of them while running around the park!

Flowers, I don't know the name of all of them but I suppose they are all lilies?

Later, we went to the ice cream stand to have ice cream. The mother took a gay picture of me eating ice cream =.=". The boy in the blue striped T-Shirt is the neighbour's 13 year old son while the small cute boy in green is Kento. Next, we drove to the district's fire station. We were told that the father works as a fireman at that station and wanted us to show us around. When we reached the fire station, Kento was already sleeping. So the mother decided to stay in the car to take care of him while me, Jun Hou, the neighbour's kid and the father left the car and explored the station. He introduced himself to his collogues. They were all very happy to meet us. Next, we entered the earthquake simulation room where a earthquake simulator is present. We entered the simulator and they set the machine to 3.0 magnitude. There was a little bit of shaking but nothing much. It was gradually increased to 7.0 where the shaking was very violent. For safety reason, we were told not to stand, but sit on the floor so that we do no fall.

The shaking was so violent that I lost my sense of direction and balance after the shaking stopped. My head was literally spinning! Then, the shaking started again, this time, there was a mixture of strong shaking and weak shaking. I was told later that the earthquake we experienced just now was a replica of the Kobe earthquake which killed thousands back in the 1990s. Next, we used a fire extinguisher to extinguish some 'flames'. Actually, we are extinguishing flames from yet another simulator. It works like this: There is a fire on the screen and we have to use a fake fire extinguisher to put out the flames. Japan is so high tech, using simulators for practically everything.

Next, we got a chance to enter one of those fire trucks. I got into the driver's seat as usual. They demonstrated what the various buttons do and stuffs. They even showed us a hydraulic cutter that can cut through thick metals.

The powerful hydraulic cutterFire trucksMe in the driver's seat! The view outside
Posing with the crews of Miyagi fire departmentAfter that, we made our way back home. By the time we reached home, there are quite a number of people in the house already. They were the relatives of my host family. We had a chat with the uncle who was incredibly friendly, partly because he can speak English and partly because he is a really funny person. He said he had been to S'pore 2 times already and asked where we stayed. He then sketched a rough shape of S'pore and drew Sentosa at the south and asked the location of our homes relative to Sentosa. The fact that he knows where is Sentosa is quite commendable already.

So, after that chat, we had a chance to prepare dinner. We were told to make rice balls in the traditional way. But first, we have to pound the rice. Grandfather demonstrated how to do it. First you pick up a heavy looking wooden mallet and start pounding it with all your force into a bucket filled with rice. He let Jun Hou and me take over. It was a really really heavy mallet. I had difficulties pounding the rice as it was really heavy. The father helped me a little and I got tired soon after and gave up. Nonetheless, it was quite an experience.

Grandfather demonstrating the right way to pound the riceMe together with the father pounding the riceNow, I am pounding the rice on my own! Ferrari power!Jun Hou managed to pound the rice without much helpAfter that tiring work, it was back into the house where the neighbour's son introduced to us an ingenious way of communicating. He showed us a software on the laptop which allows direct Japanese to English translation and vice-versa. It was much faster and easier to use than the handphone and of course, the words are much bigger too. It made our language barrier shrink from a thousand miles to only a mere centimetres. Their keyboard is a little bit different from ours as I could spot some Japanese characters on the keys.

Me typing on the translator as others look uponBy then, more people had arrived, we had more small kids joining us. How great! It was dinner time and we ate in the garden. There was lots of food. Let me name a few: Teriyaki chicken sticks, rice balls, fried prawns, green tea paste, errr.... some soft drinks, there's more but I can't really remember much. But one thing I can clearly remember was that the weather was really cold. The wind was blowing quite strongly and night time in Japan was freezing, even during summer. I took a quick glance at the thermometer inside the house, it states 17 degrees Celsius. And mind you, that's IN THE HOUSE, it's much colder outside with the howling wind and lower temperature. I reckoned it is about 13 degrees outside.

We having dinner in the garden. Look at the cute little kids and our laptop/translator which makes communication much easierI kept complaining to the neighbour's son about the freezing weather which kind of dumbfounded him. After dinner, I checked the F1 website for news about that week's USA grand prix. This is when I found out that the neighbour's son love cars too! He introduced to me a game called Test Drive Unlimited and said he really wanted to buy that game but could not. I liked that game too because of his superior graphics. Luckily I found out about his passion for cars and later during the year, through the introduction by the neighbour's son, I bought myself a copy of Test Drive Unlimited. It is a great driving game! I hope he already got his own copy of Test Drive Unlimited.

Soon, those who don't reside at the house left. That leaves me and Jun Hou quite bored. So, having not gone to the toilet for ages, we went to the toilet (not together of course!) I was utterly stunned when I stepped inside. The toilet bowl is horribly high tech. There is a motorised seat cover, motorised spray, heated seats, and a built in sink. There's a jet of water for you to wash your bottom, air dryer to dry your bottom and another strange function which I dare not press. You can even adjust the intensity and temperature of the water that is spraying at your butt! There's even an infrared sensor to sense if there is anybody there and it will automatically lift the seat cover! HOW COOL IS THAT! All these high tech gadgets are controlled by a panel of buttons at the side.

The super high tech toilet. Note the infrared sensor and the built in sink at the top of the bowlThe built in sink which will activate after flushingThe high tech control panel. The top 2 buttons are the flush button (big or small) A row below (from left to right) STOP button, jet water spray, air dryer and a mystery button which I dare not try. Then below that it is the jet water temperature and intensity controlI spent quite a while playing with those functions as I have never seen these function before. It was quite fun playing. Even Jun Hou agrees! After that we took a bath and I noticed that even their bath tub is a hot spring - heated bathtub. Japanese really love hot water! After that, our futon (mattresses) were prepared and we tried to sleep. But I somehow could not get to sleep and went back to the living room to watch some TV. I was waiting to see if F1 would be shown on TV as it was the USA grand prix that day. Too bad Japan is not so interested in F1 than their baseball. Baseball is shown continuously for the 2 hours I watched TV.

Day 7: We woke up at 5.30am the next morning so that we could meet our 7am meeting time. It was freezing cold in the morning as usual. The sun was as bright as noon. The family gave us free toothbrushes and we washed up. Breakfast was a rice and eggs with bacon. Fresh milk was served as a drink. It was a rather filling breakfast we had. We did our last minute packing and gave gifts to the family for taking time and money to attend to us. We reluctantly big goodbye to the family and left knowing that there will be hardly anymore chance in the future where we get to experience the true Japanese lifestyle.

We arrived at the meeting place just on time and we left soon after saying our last goodbyes to our families.I don't think we will see each other again, but still - See you again!
It was another 7 hour bus ride all the way back to Narita Airport. On the bus, we exchanged our experiences about our home stay. Yagesh said that he got to ride on a motorised quad bike. So good! I only got to ride on a bicycle, albeit a good one. Aryani got to go boat rowing! Compared to others, my home stay was rather boring. While we were having our home stay, the teachers went to Sendai City via bullet train! So good! They too were amazed by the toilet in the hotel. The tour guide bough DVDs for us so that we will not be bored on the way back. It was a ghost story, it was rather trilling to watch.

The ghost movie shown on TV as an entertainment
But the interesting movie did not stop me from admiring the scenery and road outside. I even saw a sports car zooming past the bus at lightning speed. I can hear the car before I can even see it coming. This is the first and the only time I saw in real life a car speeding on normal roads Here are some things I saw during the trip

A signboard showing us that the name of the river ahead
Hokigawa River
This electrical signboard shows that traffic radio frequency
182KM to go to Tokyo
We came to our first rest stopA cute sign, don't understand what it means thoughShinoya TownTrain tracksOur 2nd rest stop132KM more to TokyoOur final rest stop at FukushimaGuess what I saw at the carpark? A left hand drive Mercedes S Class! Japan allows left hand drive cars even though majority of them are right hand driveAnd I also saw a vehicle that is banned in S'pore - A Caravan! It's a mobile house on wheels if you don't know. By the way, the Caravan is also left hand driveAt Fukushima, we did last minute shopping. I bought some souvenirs for my family and I bough this for myself - A blinking key chain.

Now you see meNow you don't!
I bought strawberry mochi, chocolates and coffee too! Then this gril called Desiree dragged me to the Gachapon corner and we bought this, a toy that makes a train related sound whenever you press a button. It is the same as Kento's toy!
It is now non stop all the way to Narita. Here are some pictures on the way there.

A soaring power station tower
Train tracks again500m more to Narita Airport. Just after this photo was taken, a United Airlines Boeing 747-400 flew over our bus, which made the whole bus vibrate and awaken those who are still in the sleepy land =)Narita Airport here we come!We arrived outside the airport departure hall. It was the bus driver Yamashita's birthday. We sang him a birthday song and tipped him generously using that we donated a few days ago. It was sad that he had to celebrate his birthday without his family. But the good thing is that after sending us to the airport, he could finally take a rest and celebrate his birthday with his family. We presented both Mr Ronnie Tan and Mr Yamashita with gifts and Mr Ronnie Tan lead us to our check in counter.

We arrived at the airport at 2.45 pm, 7 hours and 45 minutes after we set off from KuriharaDue to the stupid airport rules that do not allow liquid onboard hand luggage, we had to transfer all our bottles of water into our luggages. My luggage was already packed to the brim and squeezing in more things could prove impossible. After squeezing in the bottles and stuffs, I could not close my luggage! Even after sitting on it and using my whole body weight to close the luggage, it won't close. I needed the weight of big sized Ting Wei and me combined to finally close the luggage! Phew, if I could not close the luggage, I would be stranded in Japan.

The stupid rule that does not allow liquid in hand luggagesAryani had a fragile item with her - a traditional umbrella that was gifted to her by her host family. Luckily she was allowed to bring the umbrella on the plane. Mr Ronnie Tan started giving out the plane tickets and when I looked at the cover of my plane ticket, it states : Ms Alvan Pang - WTF! Since when did I become a woman?

Anyway, while weighing my luggage, I was hoping that I won't be charged for an overweight luggage. As it turns out, my luggage is 1.5KG overweight - 21.5KG. I think I have the heaviest luggage in the group! Luckily, the counter staff either did not see the weight or they can't be bothered in charging me the overweight fee. Thank god! I am already broke after buying that 2 planes.

Our check in counter F25 - Economy classMy ticket - Row 37 seat G, A window seat!!!! Yeah! Finally, a window seatOur plane departs at 17:40, we still have time to shopAnd shop we did! Unlike S'pore Changi Airport, where most of the duty free shops are inside the transit zone, in Narita, most of the shops are outside the transit zone, which means we do not have to go through immigration early. I went to the souvenir shop to buy 2 extremely expensive aeroplane model. I have quiet a lot of money left that why I bought the planes.

Narita Airport mall is the last place we went in JapanI bought the yet to be released Boeing 787-800 ANAAnd the Japan Airlines Boeing 777-300ERHere are the actual modelsIt cost a whooping 11 300 Yen! That's around SGD 140I also bought 2 key chains - one of ANA airline and another Singapore AirlineLater when it was 5mins to our meeting time, I found out that Narita has the best viewing gallery ever! It is open air and has a direct view of the runway! You can actually hear all the airplanes engine, from the turbine powering up to the growl of the thrust reversers in action. It was such a dream to have found such a place. Too bad I only stood there for 3 minutes. It is such a waste to spend such a short time in a dream palace. Well, better late than never =(

This is so cool! A mega size BMW front grilleIt is time to go through immigration. We thanked Mr Ronnie Tan for being such a great tour guide for the past 6 days and he wished us all the best for our future. We then went through a security baggage check first and then immigration which was one level below the departure hall. Then, something really scary happened, Jun Hou found out that he can't find his passport! He got scolded by Mr Gary Tan straight away. Luckily for him and the rest of us, a very kind Japanese immigration found out that he left his passport on the baggage check area and ran to us to return the passport to him. Great job Japanese people, you guys are really honest!

It's time to go, our plane is leavingImmigration and customsOur plane waiting for us at the gateA United Airline Boeing 777-200 getting pushed backWe took a short walk to our gate - Gate 52Then, after the boarding announcement, we finally can board the plane back home to S'pore!Once on the plane, I found out that I was sitting with Allen. Allen asked me if I don't mind switching places with him because he wants the window seat. I too want the window seat and kindly rejected his request.

Fellow passengers boarding the plane
A view out of the window from my seatThen, it was announced that our departure time would be delayed because a wrong baggage was loaded onto our plane. LOL!

The ground crew reopening the cargo door to remove the misplaced baggage =.=" Delayed the plane by 25minsOur very own SIA in NaritaThe safety booklet of our plane - Boeing 767-300Finally, we are ready for take off, please buckle up!So, there was the heavenly sound of the jet engine powering up and the weird sensation of getting pushed into the seat as the plane took off. It was a sad moment as I know I would not be able to go back to Japan in the near future, I will miss Japan a lot! Once in the sky, I can even spot fishermen fishing in the sea! Then, when we went above the clouds, I can see another plane passing us, it was great to see another plane so close to us this high up in the sky.

Here are some very beautiful sky pictures for you guys to admire:

While passing above the Philippines, there was a major thunderstorm and they was heavy turbulence, bolts of lightning can be seen from the plane. It was a scary moment for us. Turbulence hit even when I was peeing in the toilet =.="

Allen watching some penguin show while I listen to music, I kept listening to the song titled 'Raindrops keep falling on my head" as it is the only song I likeIt was dinner and for dinner, it was rice with Salmon and some vegetables. The meal was not very good, but still, better than nothing. The best part was desert as it was some chocolate cakeWOW! We are travelling at 874 km/h above the South China Sea heading towards SingaporeAt an altitude of 34 000 feetI browsed through the duty free catalogue. They sold lots of unnecessary things thoughThen, when the plane was very cold, they served ice cream to us. Quality ice cream - Haagen-DazzThe everybody went back to sleep again, well not everybody but most. Talking about sleep, I am amazed that I could hold out so long. I did not sleep on the plane or the bus at all!To keep myself entertained for the last part of the journey, I played blackjack on my personal screen. And I won! - as shown in this pictureWe touched down in S'pore at 12.25am Monday (Day 8). It was a breeze clearing immigration as there was hardly anyone around at that hour. I took my luggage and found out that the handle has broken. It must be those airport handlers or is it the sheer weight of my luggage that broke the handle? I met my parents who were fetching me at the arrival hall. I reached home at 2am and slept at 4am after doing some basic unpacking. All in all, it was a really good and rewarding trip to Japan - a trip that I will remember all my life.

Things/memories that I brought back from Japan:
1. Japanese people are very hospitable, kind and honest.
2. Japan is very clean, even though rubbish bins are quite hard to come by, the streets are practically spotless!
3. Japan love hot water, especially hot springs!
4. Never drive in Tokyo without a GPS system, you will bound to get lost.
5. Japan roads are as smooth as silk, there is hardly any bumps, especially on major roads such as the expressway.
6. Japan has a very nice weather, perspiring was almost impossible
7. Japanese love nature
8. Japan ROCKS!

Sadly though, on June 14 2008 at 8.43am, exactly a year after I've been to Japan, a deadly 7.2 magnitude earthquake stuck the Miyagi prefecture. 11 people died at 250 people were injured. I do hope that my host family was unharmed during the earthquake.

I was told my Mr Gary Tan that our hotel has collapsed and the river where we did our field work has been chocked by a landslide. I was dumbfounded after hearing this bad news. I hope everything there is fine now.

A hotel in Miyagi prefecture balancing precariously at the edge of a rock as the earthquake displaced the earth underneath it.I do hope you've enjoyed my special report about my trip to Japan in 2007. I know it is a super long post and I thank you for reading. If you have any questions or need any full sized picture about the trip, please do leave a message on my cbox or contact me via MSN! =)

2008-06-13T19:26:00.008+08:00

Splat!

Haha, so funny. Loo Loo got splatted with cream during his 'birthday celebration'. It all started on Wednesday where we have to come back for Maths remedial class. We were doing some questions when out of a sudden, Fanny, Paul and Yan Xun left the class. We did not suspect anything yet but they soon came back in a much bigger group consisting of people like Yun Keat, Nadya, Kim blah blah... They were holding a birthday cake and it suddenly dawned on me that they were celebrating Loo Loo's birthday.

Then, I noticed that Yun Keat, Yan Xun and Kim were holding a plate of cream in their hands, they hid their hands behind their backs so that Loo Loo could not see the cream which would soon end up on his face.

Yun Keat with a plate of cream
Yun Keat, Kim and Yan Xun all holding plates of creams (Circled in different colours). Naughty boys! Yan Xun could not hide his excitement - as shown by his facial expression
Nadya presented Loo Loo with his b'dae cake and that initiates the cake cutting ceremony.
Then, the moment of truth, the cream is splatted on Loo Loo's face courtesy of our 3 musketeers. (That blurry image in front of Loo Loo is Yun Keat's hand splattering Loo Loo) Yan Xun was about to strike too! (Red circle)
Creamy Loo Loo! He definitely did not expect to celebrate his birthday like this.
The clean up starts...
When Loo Loo went to the toilet to wash up, Yun Keat splashed a bucket of water onto Loo Loo. It was definitely a wet and wild birthday party for Loo Loo. The party planners were not that cruel to let Loo Loo go home with dirty clothes. So they bought him a new shirt which doubled as a birthday present.

We ate Loo Loo's birthday cake. It was creamy blue berry. Not the tastiest cake I have tasted, but it was acceptable nonetheless.

Anyway, here are some pictures that portrays Singapore's sotong side. These pictures are taken at the newly opened Smith Street hawker centre at Chinatown.

Notice the upside-down sign on the top left hand corner? LOL. I don't know how a normal construction worker who knows basic alphabets would not know it is screwed in upside-down =.="
A closer look at the flawed sign
On Thursday, me together with Aishah, Aryani, Danial, Firdaus, Haikal and Elsie went to Sentosa for a day out at the beach. We met at Vivo at about 10am. I went to my favourite hang out at Best Denki for a few rounds of Grand Turismo 5 on a G25. I met George while driving. He was supposed to come along with us to the beach but somehow, our outing clashed with his St John outing in Sentosa. Thus, sadly he could not come with us. George tried to drive the G25 and promptly crashed out at the 1st corner. Gran Turismo 5 on a G25 is indeed a hard game for beginners. So beginners, don't try driving a G25 at home!

Haikal came a while later but refused to have a go on the G25. Aryani, Aishah and Firdaus came a while later. Xiao Dan, the person who planned this outing to Sentosa was nowhere in sight. I later learnt from Aryani that Xiao Dan decided that she was 'sick' that day and did not come. Pang seh kia =.=". Aryani and Aishah had a go on G25. Oh no! Women drivers playing an incredibly hard driving game equals to disaster!

Surprisngly, Aryani can control the car much better than I expected. She was 100 times better than Diva in driving. Though both Aishah and Aryani went off the track countless of times, at least they completed the full 2 laps, 4 laps for Aryani's case. Aishah was very good at cornering while Aryani was very good in recovering the car when it spun. Although they are too scared to floor the accelerator, it's still better to be slow than crash into the wall.

Elsie was bugging us to go as it was already 12pm. We spent 2 hours at the games corner. LOL! So finally we made our way to the Sentosa Express station.

The train is arriving! Yeah!The Superstar Virgo at the docksThe big Lobang (hole) at Sentosa. The Lobang is created because of the upcoming Genting Integrated Resort.Haikal, Firdaus and me!We arrived at Sentosa's beach station and as soon as I got to the gates, I was stuck because I accidentally bent my ticket and at the same time spoiled the magnetic coil in the card. The Sentosa peeps let me out with their special card. We walked to the bike rental shop and there, we debated over which to do first, cycle or go to the beach first. Aryani and me thought that since we are already at the bike rental shop, why not we cycle first? But the others thought otherwise, so majority wins and we headed back to Beach Station again =.="

We queued up for the tram that will take us to Tanjong beach. This is when Danial arrived and we soon boarded the tram for Tanjong beach. It was a bumpy ride to Tanjong beach as the tram's suspension was bad.

We reached Tanjong beach only to find that they were doing some oil spill exercise to clean up some 'oil' at one end of the beach. We are afraid of being contaminated with 'oil', so we made our way to the other end of the beach and found a hut to settle down and put our things. We played beach soccer at first. But due to the hot sun, our feet burned whenever we stepped on the sand. So we decided to use the soccer ball and turn it into a game of water polo!

The seabed was filled with eky stuffs such as seaweed and other junks. What's worse, Aishah and me were bitten by crabs! Wth, the crab bit my fingers when I was trying to get rid of it as it was obstructing me underwater. Of course I did not know it was a crab until it bit me. The crab bit Aishah on her legs. Stupid crab. We played a game of monkey in the water too. While playing, Danial lost his glasses, we took a long time using our feet to feel the seabed until I finally found his glasses. Danial owes me a meal for that. Nah...haha joking! Here are some pictures.

Danial!
Firdaus helped us take a group photo in the water. Thanks Fi!
Then we deicded to get out of the water and built sand castles instead. I found some planks of wood by the beach and use it as a tool for our new sand castle. We were building the largest dam in the world until the waves washed it away =.="Aryani buried in sand! Haha! Haikal and me stood guard just in case anybody tries to remove the sand. Haha!After 2 hours, we went to wash up at this really small wash area made out of rectangular metal conatiners. Yes, they are the same conatiners that you see being loaded onto ships and trucks. We met some people along the way. We met Desiree and her friends, met Lionel and George together with their St John mates and met Wakadeish with his family.

So we took the tram back to Beach Station where sadly, Firdaus has to leave to settle some things. We said our goodbyes. Aryani, me and Aishah wanted to go cycling. But Danial, Elsie and Haikal wanted to play cards. So we went our seperate ways temporarily. The rental rates for the bikes were expensive! $5 per hour. Actually, everything in Sentosa is overpriced! A bottle of 500ml mineral water cost $2.50! I could buy a plate of chicken rice elsewhere with that kind of money.

While cycling, we learnt something new. We learnt that cycling in Sentosa is a complete waste of money because the beach area is the only safe place for cycling. It took us merely half an hour to complete cycling (slowly) from one end of the beach (Siloso) to the other end (Tanjong). While cycling, I received a call from Varun saying that he is coming to Sentosa to meet us. Wtf! So late then come, lols. We were ending our cycling soon and told Varun to wait for us at Vivo. At the same time, Haikal, Elsie and Danial left for Vivo to meet up with Varun.

Aishah, Aryani and me slacked at the side of the road for a while to kill time while we wait for our 1 hour to run out. This is how boring cycling at Sentosa gets! It was a complete waste of our $5!

We returned our bikes later and took the Monorail back to Vivo. As expected, I have trouble with my ticket but the friendly staff at the gates helped me. The staff at Sentosa were so friendly that we thought it was too artifical. We first thought of this when Aishah pointed out that when the Monorial leaves the station, the staff on the platform will wave to the people on the train. While I appreciate their 'friendliness', I think if they wanted to wave, they could at least do it with emotions. The staff looked like some robot when they waved at us. It was kind of scary to see them wave at us with a fake smile. I'm not complaning, but I'd rather they not wave at us. Haha.

So we arrived back at Vivo to meet up with Haikal and Elsie. Danial left already. We went to Banquet for dinner. I was so hungry that I gobbled up 2 meals. The first one was western food - Grilled fish with pasta while the 2nd meal was Chicken rice. In the time I took to finish 2 meals, it took Aryani the same time to finish 3/4 of her Yong Tau Fu meal. She's indeed very slow at eating.

Then suddenly, Aryani exclaimed out loud, she said she lost something (again) =,=" We thought it was her phone or something. But it turned out to be her camera's memory card. She said she left it in her pants and went swimming with it. What's worst, she said her pockets was filled with sand and she emptied the sand, along with her memory card into the sea! LOL! For all we know, it could have floated to Indoneisa already. It is impossible to find such a small thing under the water, unlike Danial's glasses. So, we told Aryani to accept the inconvinient truth. Haha.

So Aryani, me and Aishah went home together on bus 855. To kill time, we talked about all sorts of things such as - have we ever gotten lost before and childhood stuffs. I learnt some new things from that chat. I'm not about to reveal anything here though. Haha!

On the way home, I spotted this Nissan GT-R supercar. Damn cool!
So that's the end of my post! To add on to the excitement, the next post shall be a very special post. If you want to know what is the special post all about, please visit my blog anytime soon. Till then, make sure nothing is in your pocket before you go swimming in the sea!

2008-06-08T02:49:00.008+08:00

Ice Skating!

Yeah, that's right, I went ice skating for the first time ever in my life. Will elaborate more about my experience on the ice later. This was the second week of the holiday classes.

There was a series of Maths test which I failed terribly so far. Cindy Tan wore the new Singtel Formula 1 Grand Prix strap which can be hung around the neck. We started a new topic on POA about some accrual concept thing and she seemed to love using Singtel in her examples. I guess one of her relative or husband must be working in Singtel as I think only Singtel staff can receive the strap. As my dad works in Singtel, I too received the Formula 1 tag. And bloddy hell, Cindy seperated me and Haikal for POA class just because Charles is making hell lots of noise and Cindy wanted Charles to sit with me so I could tame him. What horrible excuse!

On Thursday, Justina decided to join us for Chemistry class as she missed her A Maths class for some strange reasons. She found our practical very fun and amusing. Mr Wong even set fire to the floor (again =.=") and Justina, haven't had any experience with that dangerous Mr Wong, is the only one who stood near the fire as everyone around her ran away expecting the inevitable. She was so shocked when the floor caught fire. Too bad I did not have my phone with me at the time or I could have gotten a picture.

The class was filled with a pungent odour after the fire extinguished itself. It was so smelly that we had to carry out our lessons outside the lab. But the fun did not end there. Justina, being our special guest, has the honour of experiencing first hand how Mr Wong can go crazy. He started chasing Justina round and round with a bottle of Chloroform. Mr Wong wanted to 'poison' Justina with Chloroform but failed miserably. Daunted, he stop chasing Justina and went chasing other people instead, I almost got poisoned by him. The only person (or dog) to be 'poisoned' was Bad dogie. With his low level on intelligence, it's not surprising really.

Mr Wong chasing Justina with a bottle of Chloroform
Justina: "How can you treat your guest like this? What did I do to deserve this?" Look! Mr Wong tried (unsuccessfully) to poison me. Good thing I escaped in time. Phew!
Stephanie was next
Bad dogie lays dead on the floor as he was being poisoned by Mr Wong

And for D&T, I FINALLY got my LED circuit lights to work! I'm so happy. What made it better was that I got it right the first time round, I don't need to redo or resolder anything. But the fact of the matter is, I hate electronics, I hope this is my last time dealing with such things.

So after D&T, me, Justina and Diva went to Dhoby Gaught (Plaza Sing) to have Pasta Mania lunch. Justina was short of cash so she ordered some cheap cheap pasta while i ordered a slightly more ex pasta. Diva rich guy sia, go order the most expensive meal among us. After lunch, we took bus 16 to Kallang Leisure Mall for - you guessed it ... ICE SKATING! Hahaha, this is my first time ice skating and I felt really excited.

On the way to Dhoby Gaught, we spotted this man (in the 377 shirt) at Outram station doing funny things with his hands, I think he is dancing to entertain us? It was rather funny watching him dance while walking.
I could not get a video of him dancing, so I went onto Youtube and found a woman doing the almost exact same thing as the man did, It also happened in a S'pore MRT station, they could be siblings for all we know. Let's take a look at this video.

We took bus 16 there. When we arrived, the mall looks very empty, I don't like empty shopping malls, it makes me feel sleepy and bored. We took the mall's incredibly inefficient lift up to the 3rd floor only to find that the ice skating ring was filled with people. It is the largest ice skating rink in S'pore. This may sound great but think of it, there is only 2 ice skating rinks in S'pore, with the other being the older Fuji Ice Palace. I could build a rink just 1 sq ft bigger than Fuji Ice palace and name it the biggest ice skating rink in S'pore. With that said, it was quite obvious that the rink wasn't as big as we thought out to be in the first place.

The fee was $18.50 for 2 hours including rentals of skates and gloves. Justina did not bring her socks and paid $3 for a pair. Bloody hell, there was a ice resurfacing time of 20 mins during our 2 hr time slot. But it is stated on the ticket that there will be NO refunds or extension time if we are unlucky enough to book a time slot during ice resurfacing. So we put on our skates and tried walking, it felt really weird walking on 2 thin metal blades. You can only imagine how Diva would struggle to walk in those thin shoes.

The ice skating shoes
Then, the moment we all have been waiting for... We stepped into the ice rink and it was clear immediately that me and Diva were struggling to even balance ourselves. Justina on the other hand seemed like she has taken skating lessons as she immediately skated with ease. Diva and me were holding on to the side railings for balance. I calmed myself down and released my hands from the railings. I was expecting to fall but to my surprise, that didn't happen, instead I was balancing myself on the ice. I tried skating off but struggled terribly. I could not even skate for 1 metre. Justina gave me some tips about skating and I tried again, the tips worked to a certain extent as I can feel myself moving.

I must have looked like some clown in the rink as I was waving my hands all around to keep my balance. It was really difficult to skate forward and balance. What about Diva then? While I tried skating forwards, he was struggling to even balance himself. Justina and me urged Diva to let go of the railings. He did and he too, balanced nicely on the ice. However, when he tried skating forwards, the inevitable happened, Diva fell! Hahaha! We made a deal earlier on to take a picture of the person who falls down first. True to our words, Diva was caught on camera first for his inability to keep himself upright long enough.

Diva is the first to fall! Ouch!Diva falls again... =.="
And again =.=" Justina went to do a slut post to celebrate Diva's fall -LOLS!
Execution time! Justina holding a gun which will fire any second now...!

I did not fare well in keeping myself upright too. I fell quite a number of times. I'm not sure if any of them took a picture of me falling down though. I hope not! It will be so embarrassing. Hahas! Then, disaster striked, Diva fell down again and complained that he could not feel his hand! We were quite shocked when he said that because it could mean he's nerve is broken or worse, he's paralysed. Diva went to take a rest while me and Justina continued skating. I soon got used to skating and skated slowly but steadily. Actually not steadily, I fell down countless of times as I could not get used to the speed.

One important tip I want to give to you guys the next time you go ice skating. PLEASE wear LONG socks when going for ice skating. I wore the school socks (which was almost ankle length) that day and felt very very uncomfortable throughout the skating session. The shoe was rubbing against my skin and I could feel blisters sprouting out. My front part of my feet started to hurt halfway largely due to my inability to keep my skates perpendicular to the ground. It placed undue stress at the edge of my toe causing 3 blister to appear. In short, PLEASE WEAR PROPER LONG SOCKS when going for ice skating next time.

Justina and me could sense that Diva was very sad that he could not skate because of his injured wrist. He said it felt better but was still in pain. We felt bad for him as he paid so much money but he could not skate. He went back to the rink a few times but always stuck close to the sides. It was a pity he could not venture into the middle of the rink to join us. Then, a loud whistle blow was heard signalling that the ice rink shall be closed temporarily to allow the ice resurfacing machine to do it's job. It was rather entertaining watching it go round and round. The driver seems to be a woman driver, but she/he looks like a man too. He could be transsexual? Anyway, the machine even drifted on the ice a few times. Just like Initial D, only the 'car' isn't actually a car.

Wow! What huge tyres it has! Well, not huge tyres but I would say a huge bonnet.The alleged transsexual driving the drifting machine
The resurfacing took a 10 mins, which was 10 mins earlier than expected. So Justina and me skated till time is up and returned our skates. We went to 7-11 where Diva got baked beans and Justina got instant noodles as their tea break. As for me, a bottle of root beer was enough. On the way to the bus stop to take bus 16 back to Dhoby Gaught, Justina started playing with this road marker right in the middle of the road. We must look like some despos with nothing to play with. =.="

Justina: "My new bright yellow toy!"
Justina: "What's more, it matches with my T-shirt!"We went back to Plaza Sing to play arcade. They don't have Battlegear 4 which is my favourite arcade game. So I resorted to playing Initial D first. Then I joined Diva and Justina with Mario Carts. Mario Carts is one of the MOST UNREALISTIC game I've ever played. I'll explain why. In a normal game, when you brake, your car doesn't stop immediately, but in Mario Carts, a slight tap on the brake brings the car into an INSTANT STOP! Bloody hell, I lost my lead in the first corner because I am being realistic. But my realism cost me miserably. I learnt my lesson and the next corner, instead or braking, I merely released my accelerator pedal.

The sole act of releasing the accelerator pedal was not a problem. HOWEVER, the problem comes when I re-stepped the pedal. The car simply stopped on the track as it spins it's tyres on the spot. This sort of thing does not happen in real life unless you are driving on ice. And the track in Mario Cart is not icy, in fact I'm racing through a city. I really don't understand the physics of Mario Carts. Given my inability to understand the Mario's stupid and irrelevant law of physics, I lost to Diva. =.=" I learnt from him later that he did not even lift his accelerator pedal.

So I can only conclude one thing from Mario Karts. It is a game for kids who doesn't understand the difference between braking and accelerating. People who excel in Mario Karts will be terrible drivers in a realistic driving game. Unlike Mario Karts, you cannot simply floor the accelerator pedal at a corner in a realistic driving game like Battlegear 4 or Maximum Tune blah blah. A crash is inevitable. Nor will the car freeze on the race track when you tap on the brake pedal. If you want to know who real driving feels like, NEVER try Mario Karts. It is a great game for kids but it's a horrendous game for teenagers/adults.

Justina playing a horribly expensive shooting game which lasted 1 min =.=" A total waste of money!Diva winning the kiddy game - Mario Karts. Shows how much of a kid he is =) Then we spent our remain tokens on this very fun game, it's called 'spot the difference'. It may sound lame and simple, but I found it amusing and addictive. It is certainly better than Mario Karts and dare I say it - Initial D.

After arcade, I went to Daiso to buy myself a $2 pen knife for D&T (don't get the wrong idea). I really liked the design. It is in striking yellow and black stripes which makes it look fast and aggressive - just like a tiger, or a race car! After that Justina and Diva took the MRT home while I took bus 14 home from Penang Road. That bus stop has that electronic time table thingy. When I looked at the time of arrival for bus 14. It states 26 mins! WTH! 26 mins wait for a bus? What's worse is that it was 7pm - smack in the middle of evening rush hour.

I refused to believe the time table. I timed the arrival of bus 14 by myself, and god was that time table was accurate. The bus arrived in 27 mins 43 secs! Seriously, a world class city like S'pore should not have this kind of waiting times for a bus in the middle of evening rush hour. Unfortunately, unlike most other bus stops, the bus stop doesn't face the road, it only faces the MRT station and a small lane for the bus to pick up passengers. This means no car spotting and I had to wait an agonising 28 mins for the bus to arrive. Fortunately, I found a seat on the bus and reached home much later than I expected. Stupid bus. =.="

If you didn't get what I meant about the electronic time table, here is a picture of it. It was taken a month back. So obviously it doesn't show the 26 mins wait for bus 14.Jaguar XF
Nissan 200SX at Kallang Leisure MallThat's enough for this post. I will let you all in on a little secret. There will be a special post in June 2008. If you want to know what is the post all about, do stay tuned! Till then, try not to fall on the ice or risk not being able to type properly.

2008-06-03T21:36:00.002+08:00

Holiday Classes

Sigh! Isn't it suppose to be the June holidays? But the school ruined our only time we can have proper rest with TONS AND TONS of holiday classes. 2 FULL weeks of holiday classes have been planned. The only saving grace for the holiday classes is that the hours that we have to attend lessons has been reduced. And proper attire is not needed. However, with that said, only T-shirts/shirts with the school name on it is allowed. =.=" Even the Straits Times published several articles about holiday classes affecting the students. Okok, I will stop ranting ok?

Anyway, the 1st week of the holiday classes was spent doing lots of D&T, namely assembling my artefacts for the O levels. There was also lots of POA and Physics lesson.

Went to play badminton with Haikal on Thursday only to find that the school hall was so bloddy occupied by those volleyball players. So we met up with Elsie and went across the street of Queenstown CC and paid $4 to book the hall for an hour. Somehow or rather, we met Xavier, Wee Liang and Clifton at the CC and we took turns playing badminton. The hall even has air con! However, due to the secret location of the air con switch, we could not turn the air con on and the air con was deemed useless. My China made plastic shuttlecock sent it's ball flying in all directions leaving only the plastic cock behind. Opps, that sounded wrong. LOL!

Xavier does his ballet dancing thingy

Xavier dance like he's in an Chinese wayang
Xavier and Clifton in a game of badmintonXavier bowing to me after that wonderful performance
Cy3lx 'wibing' ewww!
Nissan GT-R (R35) in a heavy downpourJaguar XF, a car with a super cool interior. Here's a video about the Jaguar XF, watch from 3:20 seconds onwards.
It shows the high tech gadgets inside the car, namely

- The motorised air con vents
- The pulsating "Engine Start" button
- The beautiful blue dashboard lights
- Touch sensitive buttons
- Finally, the raising rotary gear knob - Super COOL!

Remember, watch from 3 mins 20 secs onwards

That's all for this week's post. Here's a hint, there will be a special post in the next coming weeks, stay tuned! :)

2008-05-31T00:34:00.001+08:00

The Queensway Insiders

Mr Tuxedo whoever he is, has asked me through their new "The Queensway Insiders" blog to help him and his fellow authors publicise their new blog. I've read it and it seems quite interesting. There are 4 writers there, so I don't think the blog will 'die' because at least 1 of the 4 writers must be updating the blog. Enough introduction already, they didn't pay me you know? I am so kind to advertise for them. I just hope they tell me who they are :) Haha!

Here's the link:
http://thequeenswayinsiders.blogspot.com/

I've also included their link in "My Friends" column. Feel free to explore this blog! Argg, why do I sound like I'm being paid to do this? Oh well, I'm off, Vrooommm...!

2008-05-28T23:59:00.005+08:00

Monaco Grand Prix Review

It was wet wet wet in Monaco! Moderate rain fell in Monaco just before the start of the race. Rain in Monaco is going to call for an exciting race ahead because of several reasons. First, it is a very slow and tight street circuit, barriers are so close to the cars. If a driver make a small mistake, chances are he will end up in the barriers, as many have found out in the past. Secondly, the problems caused by the ban of traction control this year is amplified in Monaco because of tight and twisty nature of the track. Finally, rain at any track without traction control is going to be dangerous. But rain in tight and twisty Monaco is going to spell trouble for the teams and drivers.

During Qualifying, a major accident happened at the chicane after the famous Monaco Tunnel. David Coulthard lost control of his car and slammed into the barriers which detached his right rear wheel from his car and it was sent flying down the road. Luckily, he was not injured and climbed out of the car. Here's the video of what happened.

David Coulthard crashes heavily during Qualifying

Scooby Dooby Doo! Lmao!The Monaco Harbour, so many boats/ yachts
Before the cars set off for the warm up laps, they were all fitted with Intermediate rain tyres for the wet conditions. Intermediate tyres are used when the track is not very wet but it's not dry enough for normal slicks tyres to cope. As the 5 red lights went off, Lewis Hamilton (Hammy) made a good start and overtook Kimi Raikkonen (Kimi) by the time they reached the first corner. Surprisingly, contrary to everybody's speculations, there were no accidents at all in the first lap. That is very rare for Monaco, even in the dry. But the peace was short lived as the first accident happened soon after the race start, lap 2 to be exact. Fernando Alonso got his front wing chopped off when he tried an over optimistic overtaking move on Nick Heidfield. Alonso has to pit for a new front nose. But troubles for him did not end there, he lost control of his car at Turn 4 and remember what I said when a driver makes a mistake? Yes, he slammed into the barrier which punctured his right rear tyre. He has to pit once again to have his tyre changed. That's 2 pit stops in a space of 6 laps, not a good sign for Alonso.

Alonso having tyre troubles after hitting the barrier at Casino Square, (note the right rear tyre).However, Alonso is not the only one who has problems keeping away from the wall. Hammy punctured his right rear tyre after slamming at the side of the barrier after exiting the swimming pool complex. He has to pit for a new tyre. This accident was thought to have blown any chances of Hammy winning the race. Hammy was touted as the driver most likely to win the race, but it doesn't look good for him after that accident. But, as luck has it, another accident happened just 20 sec later which brought the safety car out. The fact that the safety car was deployed means that the whole race has to be slowed down and this gives Hammy to catch up with the rest of the field, he only lost 2 places after his impromptu pit stop.

The safety car leading the pack
So what caused the safety car to be brough out? The collision between David Coulthard and Sebestian Bourdais at Casino Square is what brought the safety car out. As conditions got worse, David Coulthard lost control of his car at Casino Square (Turn 4) and hit the barriers hard, SOON after, Bourdais did the exact same thing and end up crashing into the back of David Coulthard. As luck would have it, they came to a grinding halt in a box on the road marked as "Taxis". It was quite funny. Both their cars were promptly lifted away by the so ever efficient cranes at Monaco. Here's a video of what happened.

Look mum! Flying cars!

Video of the incident of Alonso, and the accident between David Coulthard and Sebestian Bourdais at Casino Square

In the torrential rain, many front wings did not survive. Here are some of them.

Timo Glock with a front nose missing
Timo Glock lost his wing again!
Nelson Piquet Jnr emo-ing after crashing out at Ste Devote (Turn 1)Despair for Ferrari as 2 inicdents sprouted. Kimi Raikkonen was given a drive through penalty because his tyres were not fitted onto the car 3 mins before the race. This was clearly the team's mistake and not Kimi's. The penalty cost Kimi 4 places. Secondly, Felipe Massa made a mistake at Turn 1 and lost almost 30 secs after over shooting the 1st corner. He lost 2nd place to Robert Kubica and struggled throughout the race to keep up with the BMW driver.

The rain started to ease and many driver soon switched to the dry weather tyres. There were cases of sliding and scraping the barriers as drivers got used to the dry tyre in moist conditions. But one driver who certainly did not get used to the dry tyres was Nico Rosberg. He had a major crash down at the swimming pool complex exiting Tabac corner. The crash looked spectecular but Rosberg got out of the car unscathed. The same can't be said for the car though, there was a complete mess at the swimming pool complex as other drivers tried hard to avoid sharp carbon fibre debris scattered round the track. As again, the wreck was lifted by the ever efficient Monaco cranes as the safety car was called out for the second time.

Nico Rosberg hopping away from the wreck
Safety marshals exitingushing the fire from the wreckThe remains of Rosberg's wreck

The Nico Rosberg major accident at the swimming pool complex

The very next lap after the safety car came into the pits to allow normal racing to resume, another accident happened at the chicane after the Monaco Tunnel. It is the same place where David Coulthard had his Qualifying accident the day before. Adrain Sultil was in his best ever carrer postion in 4th place and is hoping to score 5 points for the worse team on the grid - Force India. However, all hopes of scoring points, or even finishing the race was dashed when Kimi Raikkonen lost control of his Ferrari under braking after the Monaco Tunnel. The only difference from Kimi's accident to that of David Coulthard's was that Kimi managed to keep his car away from the barriers.

But has (bad) luck would have it, instead of hitting the barriers, Adrain Sultil was hit from the back by Kimi. Sultil would retire from the race later on due to rear suspension damage while Kimi continued on to finish in a lowly 9th place after pitting for a new nose. The incident sparked a public outcry from Force India as they said they were denied the best result they have ever had. They claimed that they would have lost at least 5 Million because of the lost of 5 points. Television cameras soon focused onto the devestated Sultil as he was seen crying while his mechanics tried unsucessfuly to comfort him. Kimi appologised after the inicdent claiming that he simply lost control of the car and had no where to go to.

Kimi Raikkonen with his front wing missing after crashing into the back of Adrain Sultil after the Monaco Tunnel
The video of the crash between Kimi Raikkonen and Adrain Sultil

The race was cut short by 2 laps as the race hit the 2 hour time limit. Lewis Hamilton took the chequered flag to win his first ever Monaco Grand Prix. Surprisingly, only 6 cars did not finish the race! Very good considering rain created havoc and visibility problems for the drivers. Here are the rest of the results.

Results
01 L. Hamilton McLaren 2:00:42.742
02 R. Kubica BMW + 3.064
03 F. Massa Ferrari + 4.811
04 M. Webber Red Bull + 19.295
05 S. Vettel Toro Rosso + 24.657
06 R. Barrichello Honda + 28.408
07 K. Nakajima Williams + 30.180
08 H. Kovalainen McLaren + 33.191
09 K. Räikkönen Ferrari + 33.792
10 F. Alonso Renault + 1 laps
11 J. Button Honda + 1 laps
12 T. Glock Toyota + 1 laps
13 J. Trulli Toyota + 1 laps
14 N. Heidfeld BMW + 4 laps

Did not finish
15 A. Sutil Force India F1 + 7 laps
16 N. Rosberg Williams + 17 laps
17 N. Piquet jr. Renault + 31 laps
18 G. Fisichella Force India F1 + 40 laps
19 D. Coulthard Red Bull + 70 laps
20 S. Bourdais Scuderia Toro Rosso + 70 laps

The next race will be at Canada on the 8th of June. I may or may not do a report after the race. It all depends on the level of excitment of the race. So, I hope you enjoyed my review of the Monaco Grand Prix, till then, keep your eyes on the road and not crash into the back of somebody.

2008-05-24T19:08:00.001+08:00

Holidays! Yeah, right

I have nothing much to say in this post, so I guess it will be the shortest post yet. Anyway, it's the June holidays but there ain't holidays for me :( 1st week, packed with extra lessons. 2nd week is going to be fully packed too. It's only until the 3rd week where things start to calm down abit. Maybe we can take this opportunity go Ubin!

Anyway, in school, my Chinese teacher relieved the class for 2 days. As everyone present can sense, he is very forgiving and cannot control the class at all. So Charles used the teacher's weakness to his advantage by bullying him. Here's pictorial evidence:

My Chinese teacher, he's so innocent looking, no wonder he gets bullied.

Charles: "You believe I will whack you with this bar?"
Feuds aside, Friday's meet the parents day was short and sweet. My L1R4 is 19 and L1R5 is 28. Terrible results man. If this was O levels, I'll be so dead. So Loo Loo did not say much, he just said study hard, study the weak topics blah blah blah. Luckily he did not mention anything bad to my dad, or else I will be in for some nagging. Argg! I hate naggings.

So anyway, I found this video on the net which shows how crowded trains can get in Japan. There, they actually hire 'pushers' to literally push people onto the trains. You'll get what I mean when you see this video. Now, after watching this, don't ever complain about how crowded the MRTs in S'pore are. At least we do not have to be pushed into the train.

That's the end of this very short post, I can't wait to catch the Monaco Grand Prix as it is predicted to be a wet race! Racing in Monaco without traction control is bad enough, racing in Monaco without traction control in the rain would be disastrous. It'll be interesting to find out how many cars will finish the race (or not). I'll update the results on the most glamorous Grand Prix in my next post, till then, don't get caught in the rain!

2008-05-19T23:15:00.009+08:00

Happy Birthday!

Woots! I would like to wish people whose birthday falls in the month of May. These people includes my grandmother and Divaagar! In this post, you will see that Bad Dogie WILL NOT be mentioned AT ALL! (at long last!). It will all be about how I spent my quite 'exciting' weekend. Ok, let's skip the formalities and get on with this week's story.

It was Diva's 16th birthday on Friday. Yeah! Happy Birthday Diva! Sorry hor, I don't know what present to get for you, and I am STILL searching for it. You should expect your delayed present to arrive before the end of the June holidays (god, that's long!)

And now, the 2nd birthday girl, my Grandma! I just noticed something, I don't even know how old is my grandma! My god! What a 'great' grandson I am! But anyway, before going to my Grandma house to celebrate, I went to Marine Parade to have Ayam Pengyet for lunch. Somehow, I think the Changi Village Ayam Pengyet taste much nicer, and cheaper too! So after lunch, we went to fetch my Grandma's sister from her house at Marine Parade and we set off to my Grandma house at Sengkang.

In the afternoon, we set off in a 3 car convoy to the newly established Pernakan Museum. My grandmother, and most of my family, is a Pernakan and they planned this trip specially for my Grandma so that she could learn more about her heritage. We were plague with navigation problems such as finding the correct car park to park our car but most importantly, the exact location of the museum. I took my uncle's car to the museum. He was lucky to have me on board as he is a very very bad navigator. I don't understand his navigational skills. He has been driving for more than 8 years already and he is still having problems navigating in the City! The City is one of the most important places to navigate and he still has problems with it after driving for 8 years. He does not even know which exit to take from the CTE expressway =.=" So after some U turns and heated debate over which roads to take, we finally reached the museum. Yeah!

The person manning the ticketing counter was quite blur. He does not even know that I am entitled to a free admission as I am a Queenswayan. I guess this is one of the good points of being a Queenswayan :) He asked me to show him my student pass, which I did so willingly. Then after finding out that the student pass does not state my school, he asked me for something that could identify myself as a Queenswayan. Zzzz, As if I will bring along my school uniform for him to see? So, luckily he gave me the benefit of the doubt and handed me the admission pass. Thanks dude!

The museum was very high tech. It has alot of LCD screens placed around the building and the exhibits were very nicely laid out. And of course, they were genuine! Here are some pictures I took in the museum, enjoy!

The Pernakan Museum Omg! It's so PINK!
Creepy old lady!
Wow! What an ancient telephone we have here
And so is this...
Pink again! Arggg!The dining table, so luxurious! And it's PINK again! =.="Ancient wooden tennis racket

We will never get to use this anymore! Classic machine!Colourful vasesAre these bowls? Or rice cookers? LOL!How I wish I had these medals :)What a beautiful and exquisite jewelry!Don't give me that look you woman! I'm not going to hand that piece of jewelry to you! Never!Now, my cousin is going to eliminate you at a touch of her finger. So long woman!This guy some how reminds me of Mr Chia, my Sec 3 Physics teacher. Anyway, don't ask me what is he doing, I have no idea!And now, he looks angry (or retarded?) because I took a picture of him :)So after we left the museum, we went to have our Grandma's birthday dinner at "The house of Pernakans" somewhere in Orchard. Yes, Pernakan again =.=" Whole day Pernakan. But whatever, and guess what! My ever so lost uncle, DOES NOT know how to go to Orchard! OMG! I wonder how he navigated round Singapore for the past 8 years. So he dragged me along to his car to be his navigator once again =.=".

Once we reached, the first thing we noticed is that the restaurant was VERY VERY empty. We are the first patrons. And it's not like we came late or early, we arrived at 7.30PM which was dinner time. So there were a few China waitress serving us. The food was ok, had curry fish head amongst other unknown stuffs. My uncle, together with most adults said that the food standard dropped drastically since they last came. That may explain the lack of patrons to the restaurant.
So they have a live musician performing for us, he looks to be in his 80s. According to my uncle, he was the same performer when they came about 5 years ago. Wow! So loyal to the restaurant. Then he dedicated a birthday song to my Grandma. He is a really nice person! So we had the cake cutting ceremony. Here are some photos.

The Durain birthday cake
My Grandma and my aunt together with the Durain birthday cake
My Grandma and my cousin.
Here are some random shots of the week:

Porsche 911 Carrera 4S
Mitusbishi Evo 10 with a cardboard number plate! Go racing some more lah! Now get accident... Aiyooo!
Loo Loo molesting Yan Xun
That's all for the weekend. Diva, don't worry, I will remember to buy you a birthday present ok? So till then, enjoy!

2008-05-16T23:05:00.010+08:00

Omnimax!

So on Tuesday, we went to the Science Centre. But before we entered the OmniMax Theater, we had this science lesson about the rock formation at the Grand Canyon and the Colorado River. The 'lecturer' has a very strange way of pronouncing simple words such as 'snake'. She pronounced it as 'Snag'. But overall, it was quite entertaining. Here are some photos.

"Let me try to squeeze the Colorado River out"

"I must have caused the Colorado River to catch fire! Nooooo!"

Then, we made our way to the Omnimax Theater to watch a documentary about the Grand Canyon and it's surroundings. The graphics was simply stunning. Here are some photos I took of the documentary:

Outside the Theater, a mummy plaster statue

Amazing life-like pictures:

So, after that show we left for school. Upon reaching school, I saw this Nissan 200SX parking in our school. I wonder who owns that Nissan. It's quite rare to see a 200SX in S'pore.

Nissan 200SX in the school's car park.

Went for that Dr William Tan talk which was inspiring, but boring at the same time. I fell asleep halfway through the talk and don't know what happened next.

Wednesday was the day where the various Tertiary institutions would come to advertise their courses. I was posted to S'pore Poly Mechanical and Electronics, Shatec and S'pore Poly Maritime. The S'pore Poly talk was the best as I got out of the courses $20 richer. The reason for my sudden 'wealth' is because I randomly answered some questions that they put out to the floor and they gave me a $10 Pizza Hut voucher for answering each question correctly. I like the S'pore Poly course because it interests me. For example, that Mechanical talk covered Aerospace, cars and various other things. They even showed a picture of Michael Schumacher's Ferrari at Sepang, M'sia 2005. Maritime was interesting too because I got to learn things about ships that I never knew before. For example, the students at the Maritime school get paid to study. Wtf, so good!

Shatec was plain boring and useless. It was largely about how you should join that institution so that you become a better waiter/waitress. Sorry, but I have no interest in being a waiter. But the most memorable moment that came out of Shatec was: The speaker said: "I suggest you stop at 'N' levels and join Shatec instead, don't waste your time". What rubbish statement is that? And for the record, I don't even take N levels. Besides, being in the food industry does not float my boat, so sorry, the Shatec talk was just a complete waste of my time.

Then we went to AVA room 2 for a movie of Fantastic 4. I was listening to my radio while watching the movie at the same time. I never watched Fantastic 4 before. So, some scenes amused me! The only problem was, that Titus was extremely noisy and irritating throughout the movie. I bet he will be kicked out from a cinema hall if he was to carry this kind of behaviour over to the cinema.

Went to Vivo with Yagesh and Diva after school to... Yes you guessed it! To play that G25 steering wheel again! Muhaha. This was Yagesh's first time playing the game so I taught him the basics of driving. He tried the auto gear first before switching the manual. I warned him that the game was much harder than it looks and he agreed with my statement after crashing in the first corner. But at least, he beat Diva by miles in terms of driving ability and sense of direction. Yagesh struggled a little with manual gear but said it was more fun to drive than auto - a statement which is completely true! I aced the game by beating the best lap record, setting a time of 2min 28 secs in a Mitsubishi Evo X around a lap of Suzuka Track, Japan. A check on Youtube shows that I'm one of the fastest driver in a Evo X around Suzuka! I feel so proud of myself. Hahaha! Went home with Yagesh on 855 after a successful round of driving.

Exams results are released on Thursday and Friday. I have to say, overall I did better than expected. I expected to fail 2 subjects at least but ended up only failing one.

English - Comprehension was a disaster. I barely passed. I got 26/50! Now, how pathetic is that! Well, at least I passed compre. Buger said compre was very badly done overall. But on the bright side, Buger said I was top in level for compo! I was like OMG! I just anyhow write the transport question and got 24/30. I never ever in my life got so high for compo. My passion for transportation has finally paid off! I got a total of B4 for English. Kim was the highest with a B3. The majority got either a fail or a 'C' grade.

Maths - Hahaha! As expected, I failed like shit. I got 37.5 for both Paper 1 and 2 combined. F9 for Maths, what horrible result. 403's MSG was 7.89 which is plain pathetic. But 402's MSG was worse, I think it was 8. something. Well on the bright side, at least we are not last in the level.

Chemistry - Only 10 people passed. And guess what, I passed! It's incredible, I rarely passed Chemistry. I don't know how I passed with a C5. I was expecting C6 at best. But the best thing is, I beat Diva in chemistry, fair and square!

Physics - Physics was a total surprise! I was expecting C5 at best. But I got A2! Wow! This A2 grade pulled up my Combined Science results to B4 which is a vast improvement from last year's C6!

Geography - As expected, I got an A2 which was acceptable. But, the unexpected thing was that Cynthia, the geog queen finally, at long last, met her match! Quincy from 401 beat her in Combined Humans! Cynthia is definitely falling off her throne as a tree hugger.

Social Studies: It was horribly done. I expected a 30+ marks but I got 27. Pathetic. My SEQ basically screwed up and it caused my Combined Humans marks to drop drastically, fell down from 5th place to 11th place. So sad!

POA - I passed with a 56/100 mark. I think that this is the best I can achieve as POA revision was done last minute. I am glad that I passed my POA even though a better grade is desired.

Chinese: Wow! I passed, incredible! And my listening compre got an all time high of 18/20! But, the very sad news is that, our Chinese teacher is leaving us and that slutty Chinese HOD is going to take over! NOOOOOO! Gone are the days of slacking, gone are the days of having a good nap, gone are the days of reading Top Gear Magazine in the open during Chinese lesson. I guess our Chinese teacher reached his limits of sanity and decided to resign before we make him go insane. I am really going to miss him! Sobs :(

D&T - Results are not released yet, But I am confident that I will not fail.

As you can see, it has been a rather eventful week. This coming weekend will be a long weekend as Vesak day falls on Monday. I am very tempted to go arcade on Monday to play Battle Gear 4 (if you don't know what that is, read my previous few posts). So, I hope you did well in your MYE and if you didn't, don't despair! There's always the prelims and O levels. Talking about O levels, good luck for those taking their MT O levels in roughly 1 week time :) Till then, enjoy!

2008-05-11T13:57:00.004+08:00

It's over, finally!

EXAMS ARE OVER! For me at least, I know the rest of the Sec 4 Express have 1 last paper to go while 403 are slacking. Good job there exam time table planners :D (whoever you are). This can only mean that only the 403 people, with the exception of that Biology freak Cyl3x need not go to school on Monday! Ok, this post is going to be relatively short, I really mean short, it will be over in a paragraph or 2. Basically, I'm posting about my thoughts about the exams and how I
think I will fare.

I'm going to do a run down on all the subjects and my personal comments about the paper, let's start off with.....

English - Comprehension was quite a disaster, I did not manage to complete my summary properly and some of the vocabulary words are confusing. The best I could hope for is sub 20+ marks. Composition, as mentioned in the post before this was quite ok, answered that public transport question. For the information sheet, I will lose marks in the format but I think I wrote well for content wise, no worries there.

Social Studies - I think it was manageable, I could hope for about 30+ marks for SS, the usefulness question was the only major problem I had as I kind of forgotten how to do the usefulness question. But I don't think this question alone will cause me to fail. So no worries there too.

Chinese - What can I say? As usual, my Chinese will be a total flop and there's no need for more explanation, next please!

Maths Paper 1 - God! One of the hardest paper I've seen. There are rumours going around that Class 402 has only 1 pass and 403 has only 5 passes. Holy shit, 1 people passed only? And to add on to the misery, less than 25% of the Sec 4E passed Paper 1 and I am definitely in the remaining 75% - without doubt! I did not even have time to read what was the last question about. And I left several blanks for the questions before. I hope I won't get an F9 grade for Paper 1, at least an E8 please....

Maths Paper 2 - It was much easier than Paper 1, that's for sure. But I don't know why most of my friends say that it is harder than Paper 1. Maybe questions on Algebra (my weakest topic) was relatively non - existent in Paper 2. I made some silly mistakes, like not reading the Bearing question properly. The question requires both the bearing and length to be given but I only gave the length. I do hope that Paper 2 will at least get a pass grade, but whether if Paper 2 can save my Paper 1, that's another story altogether.

Chemistry - It was easier than expected, except that as usual, those chemical equations and solution crap are the questions that I have major problems in. I should be able to pass Chem though.

Geography - I think I will do best for Geography this Mid Year exams. I think it was quite easy and a distinction should be within reach.

D&T - It was ok, not very well done, but enough was done to pass. Nothing much to say about this paper.

Physics - Was harder than expected, surprisingly! But still manageable.

POA - Paper 1 was ok, manageable, Paper 2 was a slight disaster as I wasted time in Section B doing an extra question when I'm not required to do so. Never mind, I'll take it as extra practice and I still manage to complete all my questions (including that extra question) in time. Balance Sheet was shit, could not balance, but as you all know, you can score marks even though your answer is wrong. Very unbelievable but true. The kind of marks you score is not like Maths either, where you get method marks even though your final answer is wrong. For POA, if your answer is wrong, but your previous question's number is the same as the current question, you will still get the mark. Now I know why so many people say POA is easy to get A1. But rest assured, I won't be able to get A1 for POA this time round, that's for sure!

NE Quiz - Argg! I came soooooo close to getting the top rank of a Master Builder. Instead, I got the rank of an expert builder because of my serious oversight of not building Changi Aiport. Whatever, I was very very surprised when that Bad Dog got the same rank as me. Nope, you have not seen wrongly, that stupid dog got an expert builder too. He must have copied from people, (which includes me by the way).

Conclusion - I think I will do quite averagely for the mid year exams. Maybe fail about 2 subjects?

In F1 news, Super Aguri has withdrawn from the F1 Championship due to non - payment by a major sponsor which left them in a US$50 Million debt. Now with only 20 cars left on the grid, the F1 race experience will not be the same anymore. But I'd rather Super Aguri leave than any other team leaving though.

Here are some car pictures that I spotted this 2 weeks.

Nissan GT-R (R25) at Benjamin Shears Bridge, ECP

Nissan GT-R (R25) at some HDB estate.

There should be post exams celebrations going on. I should be planning a cycling trip to Ubin during the June Holidays. Anyway, that's not confirmed. This shall be all for this week's exam celebration post, I will be rushing to play my games. For those with exams still going on, good luck! For those who have finished, LET'S CELEBRATE!

2008-05-03T16:50:00.008+08:00

Exams Fever

As stated in my title, it's the exam period! I know I should not be blogging at this feverish moment but I just can't help it. I know you guys are mugging overnight just for this stupid exams. and some other stuffs. This post will be compressed to only the significant happenings. So no more mundane stuffs in this post - Yeahhh! Let's not waste any more time and get on with the happenings.

Week 1 (21st April to 27th April)

Buger decided to appoint me as her personal car consultant! She asked me if I could recommend any car for her. Preferably a cheap and good one. I was very tempted to spurt out the stupid China car called Chery QQ. But since Buger is not a bad teacher, I decided to spare her the agony and told her she could get a Toyota Vios. It's less than her budget of $60k and it's a Toyota! I went home to find out that a Mazda 2, which won the "Car Of The Year Award 2007" and it also happens to be my dad's car is also priced under $60k! I should have recommended that to her. But whatever, I saw her arriving in school the next day with a new, but crappy Korean made Hyundai Verna. I wondered why did she ask me to recommend a car to her if she already has a new car? Oh ya, I forgot, it's Korean made and no matter how new the car is, it's still crappy. No wonder she asked, I think it is because she could not stand the lousy car she is driving now!

Breaking News! "Loo is on the Loose!"

Loo: "If you give away my whereabouts, you shall die!"

Keith and Hari tried to report to the Police about the whereabouts of Loo but was strangled to death before the Police knew anything.
At hawker, Just and Cyl3x were using ice cubes to hit Aldy when Cyl3x 'accidentally' hit another old uncle with the ice cube! I was running away from the scene of the crime with Yagesh as we sensed that World War 3 could be round the corner. The uncle face was as black as Seetah and he looked like he wanted to fight Cyl3x. So funny lor that incident.

And for the record, Cyl3x got emo! Yes! EMO! We called him fat fuck because Justina linked him in her blog as fat fuck. He was obviously not happy about it and went completely emo, hitting me and Haikal in the process.

On Thursday, it was the English and Chinese Composition paper. English was a partial disaster because I don't remember the format for information sheet. But on bright side, one of the best questions came out for Compo. The question is : "What do you think of your country's public transport system" Yeahhh! Cars and transport topic, how can I not choose it? I explained about the different form of public transport in S'pore and went into detail for Bus, MRT and Taxis. Chinese was a disaster because my e-dictionary spoiled because I kept the battery in it for way too long. The batt DISINTEGRATED inside the e-dict. What the hell, so I definitely not do well there. The question was about 2 tourists leaving their things in a taxi! Haha, something to do with transport again! So fun.

After exam, Me, together with Helmi, Firdaus Daud, Danial, Aishah, Ryan, Xiao Dan went to 'de stress'. We went to this playground at the nearby Commonwealth multi storey car park. The merry-go-round so fun! My head was really spinning after spending an hour there. Here are some pictures!

Danial in the mini merry-go-round
Look at her hair! Scary!

No comments, the picture speaks for itself :)

Smelly feet

All of us taking memorable shots of the large merry-go-round

On Friday, I went to the merry-go-round AGAIN! This time, with Justina, Jummy, Varun and Cyl3x. I survived the longest on the big merry-go-round thus earning me the title of the "Merry-go-round Champion" What a corny title =.="

My god! How did he fit in the bucket in the first place! Now, the big question is: Can he get out? :)
Jummy obviously enjoying herselfVarun! What's wrong with you? You must have consumed laughing cookies!
Week 2 (28 April to 04 May)

First things first, let me congratulate Ferrari on their 1st and 2nd finish at Alonso's home track at Barcelona, Catalunya. Ferrari is definitely on the right track to win the World Championship. In other exciting news, Alonso blew his engine in front of his home fans! What utter embarrassment! But sadly, a major accident happened. Hekki Kovalanien was travelling at 240Km/h when his tyre exploded and he was sent skipping through the gravel and crashed head first into the tyre barriers. The impact was so great that the tyre barriers, which are anchored down to the ground lifted and buried Hekki's car!

The deceleration force was 26Gs!! That is 26 times of his body weight! Can you imagine the immense force he went through? He took 0.1sec to decelerate from 240km/h to 0km/h! It takes a blink of an eye for all that to happen. You must be thinking now that he must be dead or something, or he must have multiple broken limbs at best. Guess what? He sustained NO injuries except for a slight concussion as his helmet hit the steering wheel. The great force of crash disintegrated the front wing into micro size pieces which could not be found. I take my hats off to F1 current safety standards. If this accident was to happen 10 years ago, Hekki will definitely not be alive right now.

Hekki being taken out of the wreck on a stretcher.

Hekki being loaded on the helicopter which will send him to the nearby hospital
What's left on the wrecked car
Toyota MR-S, note the white Daihatsu Coopen ("shoe car") in the background.

Lotus Elise at my estate, he changed his number plate to Euro Style!

So Tuesday was Ben and Jerry's free cone day! Free quality ice creams! As expected of Singaporeans, there was a long queue waiting for us when we got to Vivo. But the queue was moving at a surprisingly quick pace. The estimated 200m queue was done with within 15mins! Good job Ben and Jerry on the efficient management of queues.

Start of the queue. It is at the open air playground! Yes, the queue stretched all the way outside! Kiasu S'poreans (pot calling the kettle black =.=")

In the shopping mall, U-Turning

Just a 'few' more people left for our turn

Look! A moo moo cow! So cute!

This picture is specially taken to spite those of you who did not want to tag along with us. The ice cream contains lots of chocolates and nuts! Yummmmyyy! :)So after that I went to Best Denki to play the Gran Turismo 5 racing game with the G25. So fun! There was the new Mitsubishi Evo 10. Xavier and gang joined us later and amongst all of us who played the Gran Turismo, I was the best driver :) and Cyl3x, with his feminine driving skills was the worst. And I also found out, your star sign, to a large extent correctly predicts if you are a good driver or not. Let's see which category you fall under.

Skills of a driver according to your star sign ~ From BEST to WORST ~

Best: 1; Capricon (22 Dec - 19 Jan)
2; Scorpio (23 Oct - 21 Nov) -> Me!
3; Sagittarius (22 Nov - 21 Dec)
4; Libra (23 Sep - 22 Oct)
5; Leo (23 July - 22 Aug)
6; Aries (21 Mar - 10 Apr)
7; Aquarius (20 Jan - 18 Feb)
8; Cancer (22 June - 22 Jul)
9; Virgo (23 Aug - 22 Sep)
10; Pieces (19 Feb - 20 Mar)
11; Tarus (20 Apr - 20 May)
Worst: 12; Gemini (21 May - 21 June)

I hope you fall in the top 5 list of best drivers. As for me, I am a Scorpio which makes me the 2nd best driver :) Michael Schumacher, the F1 7 Times World Champion is obviously the best driver and this list further proves that he is the best driver. He is a Capricon (DOB: 3rd Jan) and he is ranked the best driver. I know I cannot be on the same ranks as Schumacher but knowing I am only second to him makes me feel good! But if you are on the other extreme end of the scale, don't be demoralised, (especially if you are a Gemini or a Tarus) because I'm always avaliable when you need help! Remember though, you may be a Gemini and still be a great driver, this list may not be entirely true! With that, let's move back to school.

Yan Xun trying to float in mid air
Yan Xun bowing to me!

Cyl3x finally met his match! My god! Look where Cyl3x's legs are located at? Ouch!

Fire! Mr Wong set the floor alight with the nice smelling petrol

Open!

I was quite hot tempered on Wednesday because of several reasons. So if I vented my anger on you guys that day, sorry! Anyway, Wednesday's oral was quite fun. Mr Siah tested me. And guess what was the conversation about? Transport! Wow! So many transport questions. SS was on Thursday and yet again, the SBQ was about ERP and how it affects the economy. I really love all the transport questions. 4 exam in a row and they all involved transport!

Diva! Cyl3x, what do you think of this? B'dae present?

I hope you guys are studying for you mid year right now. Yo must have noticed my new banner at the top of my blog. I don't know how I got it but I was digging through my files when I spotted this picture. It really fits the blog's theme and the size of the picture is just nice! Sorry if you find that my sentences linkgage are not very good this time round, it was quite a rushed job and did not bother to check through. But I promise there will be less sloppy work next time ok? :) So, my next post will be after the exams. I know I'm naggy, but I will say it again - Study Hard!

2008-04-21T22:22:00.013+08:00

Teleporting Chicken!

Another important thing on my long list of adgenda is to inform all my beloved loyal readers out there that there won't be any new post for the next 2- 3 weeks due to the upcoming Mid Year Examinations. If you haven't already noticed, there is a new caption of words on my side bar (on the right ---->>> ) informing you about this inconvenient truth :D

Ok, I guess this is my longest introduction since the birth of my baby blog. So let's get on with the summary of this week's ever funny and strange happenings. This week would also go down in the history books as the Queensway Sec School band celebrates their first ever ray of light that has shone onto their highly reflective brass instruments since the birth of the universe.

Monday:
This year's Japan trip to Kyushu is only restricted to sec 2 and 3s. Not fair! Japan is a nice country to go to and if last year's batch of Sec 4 could tag along with us to Japan, why not our batch of sec 4s? This is another classic example of favouritism shown by teachers. So enough of that depressing news. POA was boring as usual So during lunch time, I heard this really loud engine and got a glimpse of a very rare Toyota AE86 zooming past. Wonderful car that one! If you don't already know, the AE86 is Jay Chou's car in the Initial D movie. After eating, we sat around the table and watched Justina and her magic teleporting chicken stunt. So funny lor, I don't know where the video went. I think it's in the hands of Dayana now, so if you want a piece of that video, look for Dayana.

A picture of the AE86 that I saw

Justina and her magic chopsticks performing the stunt 'Teleporting Chicken'
Tuesday: It's a seriously boring day without anything significant happening. So I'll squeeze in some photos to try to brighten up this boring day.

I found this photo on Aishah's blog with Danial acting as if he's in Lala Land at Orchard last week. Thanks Aishah for this pic! :)
I have to return my NPCC Staff Sergeant rank today, so sad! Bye Bye SSGT rank, will miss you lots!
Cy3lx and me went to the nearby food court after school at Commonwealth. The food there is bloody expensive. So whatever, we went to buy chocolates and I suggested that we take the high speed lift up the 40 storey HDB block where the view is just stunning! Cy3lx has his doubts at first but the stunning view silenced all his previous doubts and speculations. Take a look!

What stunning view of the surroundings and the sea! (You can't really see it from here but boy it's a spectecular sight to behold!)

You wouldn't want to fall off here because there is next to no chance of survival.
Wednesday: So during geog, we found out that that tree hugger Cyntia got full marks for geog test, that is, 50/50.... What the hell. I got 2nd with 46/50 while Li Cheng got 44/50 resulting in her 3rd position. What made this more appeasing is that all 3 of us got higher than the highest scorer in 401 - Sohhan who scored 43/50. As expected, the news of Cyntia getting full marks is not taken lightly and Meita from 401 wanted to have a cat fight with Cyntia. So I believe this is the scene that they will be creating.

Cyntia and Meita cat fighting - literally!Thursday: Buger came to have a talk with me in the morning because she read the passage that I copied and pasted onto that Criterion thingy. She asked me that if Cecilia is really that boring? Obviously! Or else why would I wasted time writing. She asked me to change Cecilia to "The P" instead so as to not make it so obvious. Lol, whatever lor. So scary, teachers are all stalking us! Went to computer lab for SS and did some SBQ thingy. Then, Fanny and the Indo gang found out about my blog's many conterversial pictures. I do hope that they read the disclaimer because all my pictures here don't mean anything and they are posted here just for the sake of entertainment. So if you find werid pictures of yourself here next time, please forgive me! :)

And for the record, I forgot to bring my PE atire for the FIRST time ever in my secondary school life! Luckily, Mr Chan let me take timings for the 2.4KM rerun for those who failed the first time round. These people includes Haikal, Cy3lx and Steph. Sadly though, all of them failed again! Steph and Haikal failed by a close margin of 17 secs and Cy3lx failed by a whopping 10mins! Holy Dog!

Some weird happenings in class:

Yan Xun being very angry at Paul for god knows what reason

Yan Xun scratching his head in frustration after that tussle with PaulVarun and Cy3lx in a cup noodle fight! Now where's Sheryl Loodles and Benjamin Mee when you need them?The war is on! Cy3lx with his dustpan - a weapon of mass destruction!

Cy3lx: "Now Varun, I shall kill you with my little bendy dustpan!"
Queensway Sec School band's concert titled "First Shine" held at S'pore poly was next and it was much better than expected. I especially liked that part where the percussion played the theme song of Mission Impossible and some songs from Aladdin was also nice. Here are some photos:

The percussion peeps performing. Cy3lx and Jummy screwed up a little when they got their instruments all mixed up!Yippe and her loyal band soul matesThe Joseph performance. The Fazul look-a-like (what's his name? Wen Yuan I guess?) was so cute... Lol@!So after the concert, we congratulated the band members for their wonderful performance!

Varun wearing jeans and sneakers for the first time this year!Went to Tanglin Mall with some of the peeps later where their fickle minds pissed me off and I left before they decided where to go next. So anyway, at the bus stop, I spotted the Nissan GTR -> I finally heard the wonderful engine and it's Dual Clutch gearbox! One word to describe that feeling - PRICELESS!

Friday: We went to computer lab for English for that Criterion thingy and wrote a compo titled 'Alone' Wrote about some guy who is always alone and bullied by his peers but was relived of his ordeal when the police inspector came along. Loo was acting very lame during maths lesson - for the 3rd day in a row. He cracked super lame jokes which I cant be bothered to mention.

So after school I went to the Queenstown Library with Cy3lx, Just and Jum and read several car books. We also found out that the term 'Johny' means condom. So Abigial,make sure that Johny has a Johny put on when you start to do hanky panky ok? :) Meanwhile, here are some photos of Justina's obsession to burst this water bag.

Justina with a Johny filled with water. Don't mind the bad positioning of the Johny though =.="Cy3lx tugging the Jummy horseMe, together with the NPCC peeps went to collect our LONG LONG LONG overdued unit T Shirt at Queensway Shopping Centre later on. It has a very funny story printed on it which I will post in my next post. Then, without sufficient funds in my EZ Link card, I have to walk from Queensway all the way to Redhill MRT to top up my EZ Link, Cy3lx, Just and Jum accompanied me to Alexendra Rd where they abondoned me. Anyway, I took the path where car showrooms are abundant. Here are some cars spotted along the way:

Ford GT!!!!! Left Hand Drive though, means you would not be able to see one moving on it's own power on our roads.
What is this Hong Kong taxi doing here in S'pore? (at Toyota's Leng Kee Rd workshop)Maserati Gran Sport
Saturday: Today me together with the NPCC peeps went for the High Rope Course (HRC) at Ubin. We took the school bus from our school to Changi Jetty using PIE expressway where I managed to catch a terrible picture of a major accident on the oppoiste side of the expressway. Accroding to news reports the next day, the accident happened at 7.15am (we passed the accident scene at about 7.45am) and sadly - 1 motorcyclist was killed.

The Toyota Vios in a wreck (sorry for the pilar blockage, my camera shutter button is failing me)So we took the bum boat to Ubin and that's where Mr Ma the horsey decided to confiscate Hadi's phone. He said that Mr Chua reminded us about not using handphones during CCA. Lol, Mama so strict, it's Saturday and we are not even in school! Stupid horse. Anyway, we hiked 2KM to the campsite where 5 high elements awaits us. First up, flying fox! They claimed that this is the longest flying fox in the whole of SE Asia which is hard to believe, but whatever. Anyway, I almost got myself killed when the rope kept pushing me off the starting platform. Luckily, my quick thinking told me to grab onto the pillar which saved my life. It was fun, not scary at all. Speed!!!!!

2nd was the tunnel challenge. The bloddy intstructors tricked us by saying that the dark tunnel that we are going to encounter is more than 1KM long when the actual fact is that it is only 20m!!!! WTF, but anyway it was all wet, super dark and humid in there and we had difficulities pushing ourself up the wet and slippery exit. The last 1 I tried was the Advanced Rope Challenge (ARC) where you have to go through a series of obstacles using only a rope hanging 5 storeys high. The 5 storeys high platform where we are supposed to wait for our turn shoke violently with every step each participants took. So scary lor, now I know how it feels like to be in a real earthquake!

So, I completed the task with a certain degree of difficulty and boy oh boy was my hands weak and tattered. My arms suffered rope burns and my muscles were aching. Their lunch was bento set which is acceptable in camp standards. We started gaying around by pulling each other's harness's straps. Ya, alot of gaying about. Then we took the van back to the jetty and set off for mainland S'pore. I wanted to go plane spotting at Changi Beach so I requested that I want to go home from Changi and not follow the school bus home. Luckily my mum agreed to my decision and Mr Ma let me off.

So I walked slowly to Changi Beach and found a spot before the runway. The sky was bloody beautiful, there was very little cloud cover. There was this middle age couple asking stupid questions about the planes. For example, they asked about why the planes all land in a straight line and if there's a road in the sky. Lol lor. For those who wants to know, all major airport have this landing system called Instrument Landing System (ILS Approach) and pilots use this to tune the auto pilot to that frequency or they could land manually using 2 horizontal and vertical lines on the gyroscope. The 2 lines have to form a "T" shape for it to be alligned with the runway. So, enough of technical talk, here are the planes I spotted.

Qantas Boeing 747-400

Cathay Pacific Airbus A330-400Birtish Airways Boeing 747-400

Unknown Airline Boeing 747-400

Singapore Airlines Boeing 747-400So after 1/half hour spotting planes, I made my way back to Changi Village Hawker Centre where I had my Ayam Penyet dinner. The chicken is SUPER nice. One of the nicest chicken I've tasted and the sambal that goes with it tasted just nice, not too spicy, but not inispid either. I took a very very crowded bus ride to Chinatown which lasted 2 and half hours thanks to the countless of stupid banglas that hog the front of the bus and many more other banglas and others hogging geylang which slowed traffic to a crawl. I was unlucky not to bring my earphones along. So I had to endure the long bus ride to Chinatown where I made a tranfser to bus 63 bound for home. Reached home about 9.30pm.

This is basically what happened this week. Remember that I would not be posting for the next few weeks but the tagboard will still remain active! :) Don't forget to study for your whatever exams that is coming. Till then, enjoy the ever popular song on my blog titled -> I Don't Want To Miss A Thing by Aerosmith :)

2008-04-13T22:32:00.010+08:00

Ups and Downs

This week is full of ups and downs. This post in a nutshell: Hari's relationship with a bush snippier is unveiled, the 45th annual speech day and a sad farewell for Ms Soon.

Monday: It's Sashe's birthday. And I would like to wish her a very fulfilling 16th birthday. So anyway, we celebrated her birthday in a "not so ideal" environment - the classroom -.-" You might think, why so unceremonious? Well, I don't know, but I think having a celebration is good enough. Location doesn't matter much, as long it is held in a safe and peaceful environment - so we could safely exclude Iraq and Tibet for celebrations if that's the case. I found out something quite surprising though. Fanny has the same birthday as me - 25th Oct 1992! Haha, though we have the same birthday, we do not share any personalities. She's more outspoken whereas I'm more quiet. Anyway, the surprising thing is that we have known each other since Primary 5 or 6 and it's only after 5 years that I came to know about our common birthday. Maybe she was in the same hospital as me? Who knows?

Anyway, we ate Sashe's delicious chocolate cake which has a really messy feel to it. So whatever, my temptation of chocolates is so great that after school, Me and Cy3lx went to Sheng Shiong to buy some chocolates. I bought a mint choc which consist of 24 small pieces. What shocked me later was the "Nutrition Facts" states that 8 pieces of chocolates contain 55% of our daily fat intake. And by the time I read that, it's too late. I consumed all 24 pieces of it (1 of which entered the digestive system of Cy3lx) So, I'm going to grow fat that's for sure. Who wouldn't when you consumed more than 100% of your daily fat intake.

Here are some of Sashe's birthday party pictures:

Sashe blowing her candles

Posing for the camera - Try saying cheezze without blowing the flames off :)

In USA news, the NRA chairman Charlton Heston has died. What a timely death too. After seeing the movie Bowling For Columbine, I started to hate that guy for causing grief to families who are affected by shootings. Rest In Pieces loser!

Tuesday: 1 shocking news haunted me at the very start of the day - The NAPFA 2.4KM positions were smeared by the rain. My god, I hope I don't have to re run. I'm not going to anyway because it's not my fault that the rain destroyed the paper. Buger & Gary Tan did not attend lessons because of the school's obsession to get the so called "Singapore Quality Class" award. How ironic of the school to attain such high ranking award in the first place. I certainly see no good qualities in the school. Chemistry was super fun. We went to the field near the chin up bars and started to play a game in accordance to the "Particles affecting the speed of reaction theory". It's more like game's day than a chemistry lesson. Mr Wong blindfolded Li Cheng, Shafiq, Kimi (Raikkonen) and Kat as they walk into each other, wait that's the the right word, right... Bang into each other. Haikal later alerted me to a plastic bag belonging to Mr Wong which contains a pair of socks which was about to be used to blind fold them, but was left out (luckily). We (Me, Haikal, Cy3lx & Nadya) played Danial's Mario Karts on DS and found out that (as usual) women drivers can't drive. In this case, Nadya who went off the track countless of times. Cy3lx wasn't that good either. So don't boast Cy3lx!

The birth of the Singapore's version of Osama
Here kitty kitty... I'm going to catch you! Don't run!
Mr Wong joining the fun

So at the lab, Cy3lx decided to smear himself with Aluminuim powder which kind of make him look like this:
Wednesday: During D&T, Mr Chia decided to pon once again. If the 75% attendance rule is followed, I wonder if he will get suspended? Anyway, for some strange reasons, my D&T book fell down from the second storey and I think it hit Faizal. Opps, sorry. So the relief teacher gave us a test (sigh!) which is incredibly hard. After that Haikal and me played Mario Karts at the back of the class with Danial's Nintendo DS. So fun lor. Meantime, we witnessed real time how Hari's low level of intelligence brought Buger frustration. Bugger called Hari to come out of the class to meet her, but for some "Harish" reasons, Hari couldn't understand what Buger is trying to say and barked countless of times. Buger finally tied an invisible leech around his neck and dragged him away! 3 cheers for Buger for eliminating that severely decomposing heap of rotten junk. So during D&T, Yun Keat told us about the theory of the "Sausage & Carrot" I won't elaborate on that theory though, sorry folks! However, what I can reveal is that Chinese teacher went emo again, he said that he is forced by the HOD to confiscate phones but feels bad because he thinks that we are a bunch of good students. (How right -.-") I feel sorry for him to be in such a pathetic state.

Kim in a totally disgusting "Toilet pose"
How do we lead a carefree life? Sit like Yun Keat, that's how!
Let's do the tango dance!

So it was speech day rehersal. And band certainly sucked when they beat the drum at a super fast pace that we started to walk like Ms SOON (robot). It doesn't help that BB & GG infront of us are marching at snial's pace. :(

Thursday:
Ms Soon was incredibly hyper today. I find her hyper-ness very strange as she usually act like a emo robot. She joked with us quite a number of times, for example, she told those who are constantly putting their heads on the table that she will "Tie your heads to the fans" Then, at the end of the lesson, she announced her departure from our class as she is reallocated to teach the Sec 5s maths. So sad, now we only have 1 teacher left. No more asking questions that I'm unsure of. Seriously, Ms Soon's departure before Mid Year is TOO SOON! (note the pun). She left us with a goodbye speech cheering us on for our Mid Year exams and O levels. I think she is a good teacher (boring but who cares!) and I think her departure is a REAL LOSS to the class. Anyway, on a very sad note - bye bye Ms Soon! It's TOO SOON to leave now!

Hyper robot - Too SOON!
Anyway, Ck decided not to come for NPCC the day before and he decided to pon school today. Which lead me to create a new name for him - PON STAR! Haha! So, without Ck to talk to for the 2 hr Chinese period, Tyrus and I started to talk about cars. He seems to be very knowledgeable about cars. He mentioned about the Lotus Elise 111R which I have no knowledge of. A check on the net shows that the 111R does indeed exist! Great job Tyrus, now I have a true car enthusiast to talk to! So we went for English after MT and found out that

Anyway, we learnt how to do oral (don't think sick please) from Buger when the strong wind blew the curtains into the path of the fans. Disaster strikes! (well, not really a disaster, but it's interesting) The chemistry of the curtain and fans started producing obscene sounds and the fan started to shake ominously. For a moment I though that the fan is going to drop and there goes the life of the souls underneath it.

Friday: Speech day! We were released at 11.45am today. So anyway, the news of the day is that something happened between Fazul & Ryan. Ryan is in a terrible state of denial as she seemed very happy of what seemed to be a sad situation. It's good to be happy, but please don't take it too far ok Ryan? Anyway, Loo Loo described Leong Peck Yoke as a "White Haired Demonises". LOL! Evil Loo Loo... Gossip so much.

So we could only imagine how she looks like

So I received a photo of Mama Goh dancing. I don't believe it at first, the photo does not show the true Mama's character. I never seen her wear pink and I don't think she will pose for the class. But whatever, here's the photo...

Mama Goh doing the Mambo Jumbo dance (courtesy of some Sec 5 student)Daud forcing out the baby in Yun Keat. What an agonisingly pain moment for Yun Keat
So, before speech day, I went hawker with Aldy & Cy3lx. We came back school to put our bags and went off to hawker again to meet Jum & Justina. Justina, having some cravings for ice cream, wanted to go mac to try out that new Milo Mcflurry. On the way there, we saw that the Moo Moo cows have been put up at the empty field nearby.

Cy3lx- a cow superhero wannabe Went to mac to find out that they do not sell the Milo Mcflurry. Ordered Hot fudge sundae instead. While eating, this transvestite (I presumed he's from Changi) went to the counter & scolded the cashier for not giving her/him straws. Stupid transvestite, she/he is so blind as to not see the straws are located behind her/him. Then the stupid Banglas from our school behind us were blasting typical terrible sounding Bangla music which really annoyed us. Stupid Banglas.

Went back to school only to miss 2 picture perfect car moments. A Nissan GTR R35 just zoomed passed me, and 15 seconds later another Ferrari F430 Spider zoomed passed. So COOL la! 2 nice cars within 20secs. The Nissan GTR R35 is the most value for money sports car around. The Nissan GTR R35 which cost a relatively cheap price of $300 000 is FASTER, yes, FASTER than a Ferrari F430 Spider which cost a whopping $860 000 Talk about good bargains! Since I'm at it, here's the pathetic amount of nice cars I spotted this week.

Lancia Delta Soft Top (in maroon) - Very rare in S'pore. This car used to be the best rally car in the 1980s!Lotus Elise - a resident in my estate owns this. Yeah! Now I get to admire this everyday!

So, I marched in the speech day parade, but not before declining the mee goreng that they gave us for lunch. It looks quite ok, but I ate lunch already and I'm too full for more food. Can I add that Yippe's conducting was way better than Xiao Dan (sorry, that's the inconvinient truth). Yippe was constant and her pace was managable. Special thanks has also got to go to Bass Drummer Ming Jie! After the parade, the hall was fully seated and NPCC had to forgo the concert and were asked to go home instead. But, since it's the only speech day I'll attend, I decided to wait for the agonising Cecilia Lim's talk before entering the hall to watch the concert. I sat at benches at the back of the hall. Meanwhile, I spotted a car that looked exactly like this:

What a beautiful antique car. The car I saw looked exactly like this. Could this be the same car I saw?So, I saw several ex teachers like Lolande, Lesely Leong, Mdm Roslina & Mr Chai.

Lolande and Mdm Roslina chatting while Mr Chan is carrying her son
Justina wants to take over from Lolande as a mother. Too young la Justina! Lonloade to her baby: "You want Mummy manatee or Mummy Justea?"During the Indian Dance and Band performance, everybody went high because of the music. This is an ending that I would not expect. Good job people! So after the concert I went to change out of my stinking NPCC uniform and helped the band people to clear their things. Talked to Ming Zhu for the first time I think. She's quite friendly la. Cy3lx said that she is a car freak too. o.0 Thats interesting, so many car freaks around! So, Xiao Dan wanted to give away her China Mee Goreng to us... Wait, I think there's at least 10 packs of China stuff inside. Nobody took them as it is made by China so we played bumper trolleys instead. Lame!

Went to Orchard Rd after speech day with Kimberely, Aishah, Danial, Ryan & ex student/prefect Marcus. Took bus 111 there. During the ride, as expected, I saw lots & lots of nice cars in Orchard. At one point, there were at least a dozen of Ferraris/Lambogihnis/Porsche parking at Hilton hotel in 2 neat rows! Wasted, it was quite far from our destination Cineleisure. We ate at Burger King only to find out that Ryan lost a wallet AGAIN! She said it was the 2nd time this year! So Aishah and Ryan went on a hunt for the wallet which has little chance of being found. As expected, it could not be found and we donated money to the newly formed "Ryan Charity and Wallet losing organisation".

After that, Aishah alerted me to a passing Ferrari F430 Spider! Thanks Aishah. I would have missed that awesome car if not for you. She commented that her brother also like cars. Cool! Did not know there were so many car freaks around! We went to the empty Scape building where we took some gay pictures:

So, we went to the bus stop later to find out that the bus stop is equipped with the electronic timetable. Cool, but sadly, not very accurate.

Went home by Bus 14. In accordance to the title Ups & Downs, I found out that the lift at Blk 43 in my estate is almost complete! Yeah! It's finally moving up and down :) However, there's still 5 more months before the completion of my block's lift - Sigh!

The almost completed lift at Blk 43
As you would have noticed, I added a song on my blog. If you have any better songs other than what's displayed currently, please place your suggestions on my tagboard! In F1 news, Ferrari got 1st and 2nd for the race at Bahrain! Great job Ferrari! Anyway, I don't think I would be able to post much for the next few weeks because the Mid Year Exams are nearing and I don't want blogging to affect my results too much. So, don't expect weekly posts for the next 3 or 4 weeks at least. But please do visit occasionally as I may spring a surprise on you! So that's all folks. While it's time to say goodbye to Ms SOON, please do not say goodbye to my blog but visit my blog SOON!

2008-04-06T02:35:00.013+08:00

The Capital Of France is Bangladesh
(24th March - 30th March)
(There is 2 week's worth of content in this post)

Lots of car talk and finally 2 times Formula 1 world champion Mika Hakkinen arrives in S'pore.

Monday: POA was first and it started of badly. Cindy sent me, along with a few others to the front of the class because we did not do well for the previous test. The only good thing that came out of it is that I can see the whiteboard better. Haikal was also called forward which liven things up abit. Anyway, during maths, Loo Loo became hyper and flirted with us.

George Bush seen here in a robotic pose
So during maths, I overheard Loo telling Soon that they need a calculator expert to teach us how to do Standard Deviation on our calculators. This shows that teachers are no god and that they do not know everything. Which coincidentally, brings me to Gary Tan when he says that a Honda Civic is the same car as a Honda City. God! Doesn't mean that they look or sound the same that means it's the same car. Gary Tan disappointed me with his lack of knowledge as I've always regarded him as a Gk expert. Shame on you! Haha.

So during recess, something really gay happened. This gay guy from sec 4NA called Ravin. You should know him as he is the only gay acting guy around. Ya, I saw him trying to enter the 5th floor girls toilet but aborted his gay plans when he saw me walking past. After I left the area to gawk at him from another position, he finally went in the girls toilet. So gay la!I wondered what will he be doing inside the girls toliet. There's 2 possibilities, 1, he's gay (which is obvious) or he wanted to rape somebody. Talking about rape, I watched in fear later when 2 girls entered the toilet that Ravin just went into. I hope nothing crazy happened in there.

So during Chinese, I've influenced Ck on cars. I taught him the difference between a station wagon and a hatchback. Yeah! My propaganda is going really well. So after that Physics survey thingy, Me, together with Vinson, Xavier, Ryan, Xiao Dan and Cy3lx went to Vivo. 855 was terribly late. We watched in frustration as 3 961 bus drove past and there is NO 855 at all. So we took 93 to Habourfront center where he had KFC lunch. Fazul joined us later - much to my surprise. He went to slack at Vivo's roof top where the boys and Xiao Dan play PSP while Fazul and Ryan had some lovey Dooley time together. Cy3lx became a bastard and irritated Fazul with his 'finger talk'. Ryan & Fazul left soon after and we left 10mins after them.

We took a 'short cut' through best denki and I found this mid 20s guy struggling to to find reverse gear on the G25 steering wheel on a racing game. Being a kind soul :D, I selected reverse for him and he finally got out of his sandy grave (the gravel trap). He left after losing badly. Xavier wanted to play. The problem lies with his inabillity yo change gears, so being a kind soul again, I offered to change gear for him while he can concentrate on keeping both hands and eyes on the screen. With all that help, he still got last place mainly because of his inability to keep the car on the road. Next up, me! I played 3 times and all I got first place for all the races. 3 easy wins - Hah! So we left later and Xiao Dan and me saw Fazul and Ryan STILL waiting for 855. Haha, they left so early yet we still sit the same bus. So halfway during the ride, it started to rain Dogs and Haris. Without an umbrella, I had to run all the way back home. Falling into one of those little drains along the way because the floor was totally flooded with muddy water which caused the drain to be totally concealed.

The $500 G25 Steering Wheel which I played at Vivo. It consists of a leather wrapped, stainless steel steering wheel packed together with 3 (A,B,C) stainless steel pedals and finally a H-Gear Shifter

Tuesday: First lesson is POA! And it must be the most interesting POA lesson ever. First, Aryani spilled the packet of Milo that she smuggled up to class that very morning. The poor cleaner auntie was called to clear up the mess. While she was cleaning, Charles kept starring at the auntie. I guess he must have a fetish for old woman. Haha! In another akward situation, Cindy said "It's too SOON!" To give you a better picture on how that happened, I've reanacted that scenario, here take a look!

Cindy in Scooby Doo pants: "It's too SOON!" LOL :)
Ya, I hope you are done laughing at this lame picture, so shall we carry on? The learning journey venue result is finally released! And the final destination is..... S'pore Science Center. My god! Whatever happened to my Changi Airport. It was the highest voted destination while Science Center was 3rd. This is so unfair la! What's worse is that we have to pay a bloody fee of $4 just to see crap. At least Changi Airport is free.

Wednesday

During Geog, Charles commented about Cindy's dull and monotonous voice (which I have to agree). He went on further by saying that if Cindy sound's this boring in bed, her husband will have no mood to carry on with whatever they are doing. Gary rebutted superbly by speculating that Charles must be fantasising about Cindy to give such sick comments (How true!).

Friday: Round 2 of the Gk test, and our first candidate is none other than Guru Hari. Now the first question shall be released by our host Loo Loo! The question is... What is the capital city or Thailand! Guru Hari is in deep thought.... Guru, you only have 10 secs left.... Guru Hari: Phuket? "Takkkk.....!" I'm so sorry that your knowledge of Earth is so bad... your answer is wrong! It should be Bangkok! Loser!

Anway, during PE, Mr Chan got really angry because the class was unresponsive to his commands. I've never seen him this angry before. He told us sarcastically to go back to class when there's still 15mins left. Poor us! During speech day, we had only 1 round of March Pass as there was a lightning warning after the 1st March Pass. Anyway, to any Band Members who reads this: Please revert the marching music to last's years. This year's music sounds so gay and it's very hard to hear the beat. Thanks!

Sunday: A very very packed day. In the morning and early afternoon, My family and I had to go to various cemeteries to 'commemorate' Qing Ming festival where Chinese pay respects to their ancestors. There was a huge jam at Lim Chu Kang cemetery. We got stuck in the jam for 2 hours, even though we used to seemingly less popular route (Old Chua Chu Kang Road). I heard from the news later that the more popular route (Jln Bahar via PIE) had a 4 KM jam early in the morning at about 6.30am. So, 4 cemeteries later, I rushed to the Padang with little time to spare to catch the Mclaren F1 being displayed live at St Andrew's road under the skillful hand of 2 Time World Champion - Mika Hakkinen. He did some runs on Mercedes road cars before bringing the 750BHP 2007 MP4-22 out on track. The F1 car's engine was horribly loud. They provided ear plugs but I can't be bothered to use it as it will muffle the pure music of the F1 engine. There was quite a crowd (10 000 according to The Straits Times) and I could barely move in the crowd. Here's what happened in pictures.

Mclaren Mercedes 2007 MP4-22 F1 car

2 times world champion - Mika Hakkinen!

A close up view of the F1 car (Note: People in the background are covering their ears - which shows how loud the F1 engine is!)

Another view of the F1 car
Close up view number 2

Mercedes E350 Kompressor "Safety Car". The real safety car is SL63 AMG and not this lowly E350. Liars these people!
The man himself - Mika Hakkinen driving this C320 Kompressor

While I'm still at it, these are the car pictures that I collected throughout the week

Honda Civic Euro Type R
Ferrari 360 Challenge Stradale - Cool!!!!
Toyota Celica
Audi R8 - Cool!!!!

Porcshe 911 (997) Turbo (Back view)
Porcshe 911 (997) Turbo (Diagonal view)
Audi A4 Cabriolet
BMW 325i Convertible
MG TF120
There is 2 week's worth of content in this post. Scroll down for the 2nd part of this post! Meanwhile, to avoid being held resposible for your sore eyes, here's the video of the F1 car at Padang.

Sorry for the choppy video, but the sound clip is relatively clear (which is good enough!)

Emo Week - (No, I'm not Emo)

Yes, this week has been an incredibly emo week for the teachers. This week’s post in a nutshell: Various teachers emo-ing, NAPFA test disaster and Ceclia’s De-Motivational talk.

Monday:
D&T was quite boring as Haikal, my main conversation counterpart during D&T lessons is absent because he is having fever. POA was incredibly boring too. I’ve never felt so tired during POA before and I actually slept with my head still upright. Maybe the “Missing-in-action-Haikal” syndrome is causing all these lethargy. But it’s not all sleep and no fun! During Physics lesson, Terrence asked the class if they could name any car that uses an electric motor. After asking that question, he immediately looked at me, which could only mean that he expecy me to know the answer. I wanted to blurt out Hybrid cars but Terrence told us “remember the Solar car?” I’m like huh? Which one? I thought you were saying cars legally allowed on the road. But he is actually referring to the Solar powered car that is on an expedition - travelling round the world using only solar power.

Terrence asked for another form of cars that uses an electric motor – this is when I told him my original answer => Hybrid Cars. Then he started to write down the various hybrid cars model. He started off by writing arguably the most well know hybrid car – the Toyota Prius. Then he wrote Honda Civic Hybrid. He then claimed that these are all the hybrid cars that is available in S’pore. I immediately proved his previous statement wrong by naming other models. He only wrote down 1 which is the largest Hybrid car in S’pore, the Lexus LS600h. Other Hybrid car models that he did not mention are the Lexus GS450h and the Lexus RX450h. I was later bestowed upon the title of "In-House Car Expert" which I would gladly receive :) Thanks Terrence!

In technology news, I reached a new milestone in my Test Drive Unlimited game. I've just completed a 189.3KM race across the island of Ohau, Hawaii using a Ferrari Enzo and I got 1st place with a time of 44mins and 03secs. The 2nd place car was 2mins behind me. So slow lor my competitors. As a reward, I won myself USD200 000 (in game or course) and a Alfa Romeo 8c Competizione.

Test Drive Unlimited

My reward: Alfa Romeo 8c Competizione - really nice looking car!

Ferrari Enzo which I used to race and win the 189.3KM race

Tuesday: April fool’s day! Loo Loo has a Soon fetish by proclaiming that he wants to wear Soon’s clothes. Now, that’s what I call cross dressing taken to the limit! Fanny seemed to have made a deal with Loo Loo that if he got tricked 3 times during the course of the day, he would have to do something embarrassing in front of the whole school – which he agreed. But he, being a loser avoided us when he bumb into us (he walks away as fast as a horse) and refused to answer the intercom system at the staff room. Loser!

Terrence is acting like a fool on April Fool’s day. He acted like he is a 10 year old kid having fun in class. He would walk to one corner, and then jump 90 degrees and continued walking. Cy3lx gave him the look of disapproval which triggered Terrence to spout this nonsense: "If students can kee siao, why teachers cannot kee siao?" After that he went behind me and Cy3lx and stretched his neck forward like a duck and stared at Cy3lx, so scary la! I never knew he was a very hyper active child hidden in a facade of an adult!

Anyway, during Chinese, signs of success of my car propaganda instilled in Ck. He asked me how does a hybrid car work and what are the different grades of petrol that are available. Success!

Wednesday: NAPFA 5 stations test day! I know I cannot get my 3rd consecutive Gold award this year because of the stupid pull ups thingy. But during shuttle run, Mr Leong - (NOT Terrence) that stupid gay bastard teacher go and scold me because I did not clear the blocks away from the start line. How gay. Then when it is my turn, he purposely let me wait for so long and out of the blue say “Ready-go” in lightning speed....WTF.... How to hear what you say...He scolded me AGAIN for not running when he gives his ‘signal’... Idiot.... So gay yet want to scold people. He scolded me for the 3rd time for not placing the blocks back. The worst idiot I’ve ever seen. Drive so gay car, look like a bloody gay, act like a transvestite, sound like a freaking gay still want to scold.

I'm warning you now! Don't scold others unecesssarily - especially if you are a gay bastard

Anyway, I managed to pass everything including my broad jump (with the help of Gan Gan of course!) Pull ups was gay and I only barely managed to pass. Anyway, during Chinese lesson, the Chinese teacher became Emo! He go ask Ck, Aldy Gavin and Me if his control (lack of) is affecting our studies and whether we think that he should step down as a teacher. So Emo...! Poor thing. Buger and Gary did not come to school for some strange reasons. Nevermind about that. I also learnt today that China has really poor communications reception. This is proved by the fact that Xiao Dan could not hear us on the phone when we tried to talk to her.

Thursday: I imparted more of my car propaganda knowledge to Ck during Chinese! This time round, he wanted to learn how the clutch operates and what effect it has on the car. I guess that influencing Ck isn’t that hard after all! But an unexpected disciple – Tyrus started to have car talk with me. I’m very surprised that he know so much about cars. We chatted technical terms such as Under/Oversteer, whether a Ferrari 599GTB is a front or mid engine and he borrowed my Top Gear magazine to stare at all the beautiful cars. All these car talk made Ck very frustrated and he became Emo temporarily. I’m glad that I found another person who appreciates cars as much as I do! Go Tyrus! I can safely conclude that my initial stage of car propaganda has bore fruit and I’ll strive to “propagandarise” more people into worshiping cars! Haha!

In another case of a teacher Emo-ing, Ms Soon, the emotional robot got really Emo during Maths because she blurted out of nowhere - “Everybody else is important except me!” in a very depressed tone! I did not expect Soon to be Emo in the first place. I really fear that the Emo epidemic is spreading and one of us may soon become a victim of it. In other non related news, there is further confirmation that China has really bad reception – as proved by Xiao Dan. She was standing outside the class and Cy3lx and me tried to talk to her, but due to the bad reception in China, she could not hear us. I hope China gets their reception problems sorted out Soon or nobody around the world would be able to view live footages of the Bejing Olympics later this year.

Nadya doing the superman pose

Haishien and his X Men pose - "I'll unleash all my X-tra power if you come near me"

Haishien and his X Men dance moves - Music please!

Friday: Buger proved that my theory of an Emo epidemic is correct by demonstrating her Emo-ness during English where she shouted for the first time in 2008 because of 2 blokes (Hai Shien & Lewen) who seemed to be in La la land. Anyway, Year 2007 class 303 is not the worse class in history (contrary to what is believed by Lalonde). The ‘prestigious’ title is being taken over by Year 2008 class 301. They did bad things that warrants the whole class standing up during assembly. Mr Chua also said that their classroom will be moved to the ground floor, next to the HOD room. I feel sorry for the retainers from 303 last year – they have to endure 2 consecutive “worse class in history”.

Teachers are all so Emo this week!
PD was Cecelia’s De-motivational. It’s expected that the session is going to be horribly boring. She’s going to talk and talk for ages. Within 15 mins, my mind is shutting down. Don’t know what the heck she talk. First she said you must study hard for yourself. She later contradicted herself by saying that we should study hard for the school. So what is it? Study hard for ourselves or the school? Anyway, the only interesting thing that came out of this that she said “If you don’t study, you are the big Loo-ser!” If even this is interesting, you could see how boring the talk was. Cy3lx was so bored that he started playing with the calculator.

Assembly was crap with Ivan Ho the Santa Clause. He talked about what Attitude = 100% and knowledge = 96% blah blah.... In case he didn’t know, Bullshit = 101% which is more thanAttitude. I presume that Complacency is more that 100%. So from these we can conclude that all these values are rubbish and cannot be calculated in mathematical terms.Speech day was quite fun, except for the sucky music that caused the Guard Of Honour to screw up. A change of music is really necessary before disaster strikes on Speech Day.

The Paparazzi news: Loo Loo humping the cone. Classic!

Now, this part is all about F1. I’m going to do an analysis about Massa’s reliance on Traction Control (as promised last week) and how this flaw is going to affect him. First things first, we have to know what is this Traction Control thingy. The 2008 rules states that no cars should be using traction control and a standard Electronic Control Unit (ECU) made by Mclaren (of all people) is used to ensure that rules are adhered to. I’m going to keep it relatively simple as it is a really complicated system. Traction Control basically limits the amount of power that goes to the tyre so that the optimum slip ratio is achieved so that the tyres won’t spin which may lead to other problems such as tyre wear and in the worst case scenario, a spin! It uses a series of electronics to correspond the power output from the engine and the torque curve of the car. Oh dear, I guess I’m getting too technical. I’ll keep these technical stuffs to myself. Haha.

At the Australian GP, Massa spun out on his own without any contact at lap 1, turn 1. The most possible cause of this is that he floored the throttle and the car just gave way. The same scenario is being repeated at the very next race in M’sia. He spun out on his own (AGAIN!) without any pressure from anybody. He was running 2nd at the time and the 3rd place car was 18 seconds behind. Even with this relatively easy task to keep the car on the track with so little pressure, he spun on and promptly beached himself in the gravel trap. Which destroyed Ferrari’s potential to get a 1st – 2nd place. Currently, the standings for the drivers are: Kimi =11 points, Massa = 0 Points. In the constructors table, Mclaren is leading the pack with a point score of 24 points, BMW with 19 points and Ferrari with a lowly 11 points. The bad result of Ferrari has to be blamed on Massa’s inability to handle the removal of traction control.

Massa spinning out on his own at the Australian GP 08 - Pic 1

Massa spinning out Pic 2

Massa at colliding with David Coulthard making Coulthard's car fly into the path destruction [Note: Don't mind the "Not for public use" caption. If it's not for public use, it wouldn't be on the net.]
Massa spinning out into the gravel trap at M'sia GP 08

Massa beached in a gravel trap at M'sia GP 08

There have been talks about Massa’s early departure from Ferrari if his bad form continues. We’ll have to wait for news on that one. Teams have been complaining about the Mclaren’s standard ECU fitted in all cars have been giving reliability problems to the engine. Ferrari concluded that all their engine failures in the previous 2 races (including engine’s of Force India and Torro Rosso) has been caused by Mclaren’s standard ECU.

Ok, it has been a very long post. I’m going to end it here. I hoped you enjoyed reading and Mid Year is coming! Study hard and don’t get too addicted to computer games-especially Cabal :)

2008-03-23T22:29:00.013+08:00

Fun, Joy, Laughter

This week is fun, joyous and filled with laughter. This post at a glance: Bad dog goes to court, gets his punishment. The class is on fire - literally and its Aryani's birthday!

Monday: Nothing significant happened today except that Buger went for LKY's propaganda programme - Reservist! Haha

Charles, Lewen and Hai Shein spazzing out!
Tuesday: Maths test! God it was difficult! It'll be a miracle if I passed.

I think my car/Ferrari propaganda is spreading really well. First, it was Cy3lx and Ryan that starts to take notice of cars. Yagesh got influenced long ago and he is currently doing well learning from his master :D. To add on to my success, Ryan revived my Ferrari propaganda by publicly proclaiming that Kimi Raikkonen is hot! Yes, he is to some extent, 'hot'. She also stares at cars on the road, much to the dismay of Fazul. Haha! But anyway, I'm just happy that my hard work paid off. I think my next target must be.... errrr.... I can't think of anyone at the moment. Maybe Ck bah, since we talk alot during Chinese. But I know influencing Ck wont be easy as he carries the 'bo chap' attitude in everything he does. It's worth a try anyway.

Cy3lx pasted the Mas Selamat poster on the notice board, attracting some unwanted attention.

Wednesday: The first thing everyone noticed was that the Mas Selamat poster has been vandalised! Bad Dog was one of the content and he was 'surprisingly' angry and cleverly blamed Charles for the graffiti. Charles admitted that he has done the wonderful work. Let's take a look at the wonderful graffiti!

"Mas Selemat bin Hari" and "If you see his mother, call 999!"

The whole poster. Nice drawings eh?
So it's Aryani's birthday today! I did not bring her presents to school as we'll be having her birthday party at her house later this evening. So during D&T, Mr Chia became obscene and drew a penis shaped figure

Mr Chia being obscene by drawing a penis shaped figure
Gary Tan was hilarious in terms of dressing today, He dressed in such a way that he looked like a Queensway loyalist tango dancer. His shirt was surprisingly glittery. And yes, for the record, I beat Cyntia in SS! Joy! Got 2nd in class, lose out to only Li Cheng. So sad. But it's a milestone achieved by beating Tree Hugger!

Queensway loyalist tango dancer!

Mr Wong then set the class on fire - literally! Sadly, he also burned himself in the process.

Table and chair getting burnt!

Whiteboard on fire! It's not everyday that you get to see the whiteboard on fire.

The purple goo that Hari left while he went to attend his burnt paws.

So I came back from school to find that they are 'tower bloxx-ing' my block! The crane was huge! It's very scary because if the crane were to lose it's balance, that's the end of the block's and my life. And the lump of concrete hit the exterior of my block several times. You can actually feel the vibrations on the floor. So dangerous, it could become the wrecking ball and knock my block down!

The soaring crane
From this picture, you'll get what I mean when I say, "its the end of my life when the crane topples"

Tower Bloxx! Is it going to be a combo or a miss? Let's hope it will be a combo and not a miss. Or the outcome will be disastrous!

The rotten piece of rusted junk that came so close to hitting my head!

So went to Aryani's birthday dinner later. I was the first to arrive. Waited 10 mins for Aryani and Fazul to appear. Then it was another 15 mins wait for Aishah, Kimberly and Firdaus to appear. Now, what's left is Xiao Dan. She was actually having tea with Derick and Joline (Derick's GF) Aryani & Joline had a cat fight through SMS earlier and an actual cat fight seems inevitable. Kimberley actually suggested that we use a road sign and hit Joline's head. Errr... ya, so clever! We cooled things down abit by having ice cream. Fazul said he wanted to treat us BUTTT.... he forgot to bring his wallet. Me and Aishah ended up contributing $3. Fazul said he will return us the $3 which we never got back :( So anyway, we walked to Aryani's house and came up with a plan on the way. The plan was to smear ice cream on Aryani's face. Fazul attacked first and those 2 ran off into the distance.

Seizing the opportunity, Aishah decided to smear Firdaus, Xiao Dan, Kimberley and my face with ice cream. Evil Aishah! She got back her own share of ice cream of course. Never let the guilty escape! We reached Aryani's house where we had dinner. The food was great! There was chicken (Cy3lx, it's YUMMY!), mutton, drum sticks and rice. Though its not a 8 course meal, it tastes better than most restaurants I've been to. We watched MTV while eating and this really hot girl appeared on TV and Firdaus went crazy. Haha, will not elaborate more on what happened to him. We had present opening after dinner, Kimberley gave a cute little white bear, I gave her a Donald duck's girlfriend/wife mug. The rest said that they would buy presents for Aryani at a latter date. Somebody which I don't know gave her Belgian choc in school. So we sang songs and played guitar.

Yum Seng!

Picture perfect moment!The wonderful spread of good old home cooked food!

Firdaus: "Alemak! Why this pear so sour?"Fazul showing off his 'excellent' music skills
Present presentation with Aryani and Kimberley
Thursday: Woke up to find this really funny headline

Loo-ser! Haha! Gary later said that he keeps a Mercury thermometer as a pet when he was young! Lol, so funny.
So we could only imagine how his 'pet' looks like:
So sports day, went to hawker with Aldy, Yagesh, Justina, Dayana and Shao Wei. The Mee Pok stall was closed AGAIN! Have to settle for chicken rice. So we arrived at Queenstown Stadium to find out that we have to sit on the muddy field for attendance taking. It is obvious that I'll get my shorts dirty when I sit on the field so I have to squat under the hot sun for 15 mins. So we were led to the 'grandstand' to watch the proceedings. It was boring except for the last part when the teacher's had to run. Mrs Pang was running too! LOL! Cy3lx, she ran yes! And so did mama. So let's take a look at the pictures

Mama Horsepower!
Mrs Pang running, LOL!
Pan Wei Hao running for his life (its not like he has a life anyway)
Pan Wei Hao, Loo Loo having a chat while oblivious Loo Loo was being groped on his arm muscles by this yellow yellow dirty (fellow) gay guy. Obviously he is trying to feel how strong Loo Loo's arm is. Eww!
Mama and Mr Chia exchanging tips on how to spruce up their Ferrari and Subaru Imprezza WRX respectively
Do the slut pose!
Friday: Good Friday! Yeah! Rest day. I went to this St Joseph church in the evening to gawk at how they parade Jesus and Virgin Mary round the compound. We have to hold this candle throughout the very long time it took them to walk around the compound. So long was the duration that 3 people fainted within my vicinity. I guess that's the price to pay if you want to be loyal to Jesus?

St Joseph Church

People holding candles while waiting for Jesus to come out.But before entering Church, I went for an impromptu car spotting session. Here are my findings:
Mercedes SLK350

BMW M5

Really cute looking car. First time I've ever seen this car!

Porsche Cayman
So after the ceremony, we went to Bugis Junction to have dinner. I was really hungry and gobbled up a plate of chicken rice and a plate of spaghetti. On the way out of Bugis Junction, I spotted this:

Ma Ma-ison
So, 2 races of the 2008 Formula 1 season has passed. Ferrari had a disastrous race at the first race (Australia) Both Ferraris did not finish the race. Kimi made 2 major uncharacteristic mistakes by spinning his car and out braking himself. He later retired with 5 laps to go with engine failure. Massa on the other hand could not survive without traction control and spun on his own at the first corner on lap 1. He latter sent David Coulthard flying through the air and retired 3 laps later due to engine failure. Yes! There's definately something wrong with Ferrari engines as all 6 Ferrari engines (Ferrari, Force India Team and Torro Rosso) did not survive the race. The attrition rate was atrocious! Out of the total 22 cars, only 6 cars finish. This means that Kimi got 1 point even though he did not finish the race! A consolation after a terrible weekend.

M'sia was much better for Ferrari. It was a Ferrari 1-2 for qualifying. Both Hammy and Kovelanien got penalised 5 places for blocking Nick Heidfield when he is on his flying lap. Haha! In the race, Massa showed the world once again that he could not survive without traction control by spinning his car and beaching it in the gravel. What made it worse was that he was running in 2nd place at that time and was not under pressure from anybody. I really fear for the future of Massa and Ferrari if this continues. In the end, it was a Kimi victory at M'sia! I hope Kimi could win in Bahrain, which will be in 2 weeks time. So, I'll update on the race there and do an analysis of Massa's reliance on traction control and how he could (or could not) survive without it. So, till then, study hard!

2008-03-15T13:41:00.012+08:00

The Holidays Special

Yes! Finally, after 9 weeks of labour we can 'rest' well. This week's post at a glance: Went to Woodgrove Sec for D&T conference on Monday. Chemistry & Vivo on Tuesday. Malaysia Trip for Wednesday & Thursday. In other news, The 2008 Formula 1 Season starts off this Sunday at Melbourne, Australia. Cant wait for it! Waited 5 months for this day and listen up people, Ferrari is going to dominate this season!

Monday: D&T conference at Woodgrove Secondary School. Mr Teo, Ms Kaur & Mr Chia went with us. There was about 11 students going. Remember last week when I talked about Mr Chia giving us a ride in his Impreza WRX? With 11 people, I don't think its going to happen. But hey, there are 3 teachers and all 3 of them have their own cars, I still stand a chance of riding the WRX. But all the hype shattered when we boarded this extremely noisy and old bus. Even Mr Teo complained about how much vibration the bus's engine is producing. He regretted not driving to the conference. Good thing he did not drive to Woodgrove. Why? Because he don't even know where Woodgrove is located at. Woodgrove is located at Woodlands Ave 12. He proclaimed proudly that the bus driver took the wrong exit and should have exited at Kranji Turf Club at BKE. Contary to Mr Teo's belief, the shortest and the most straightforward route is to exit at Woodlands Ave 12 at SLE. Even Mr Chia don't know where Woodgrove is. Its a good thing that they did not drive after all.

Upon reaching the school, we were greeted with an army of NCC and NPCC cadets guarding the school compound. They must be helping the Police to spot Mas Selamat as he may attend the conference to design something that can take over S'pore. It was also obvious that the school is much bigger that ours. I overheard Ms Kaur saying that she was "not surprised that the school is bigger than Queensway as we have the smallest school in S'pore". I don't know if that's true or not but I don't remember seeing a smaller school than ours. So we ate breakfast before arriving at the hall to collect our goodie bags. It contains several books & brochures about design but best of all, it contained this wooden sculpture that I saw Ryan bring to school last week.

The wooden sculpture

The talk was extremely boring. It is worst than Cecilia Lim talking because the speaker is monotonous and nobody can hear what the heck he is talking. So I entertained myself during that 2 hour talk by playing Tower Bloxx and watching videos on my phone. After that agonising talk, it's lunch time! Wow Wow Wow! The food is quite appetizing for a school event. Spaghetti for westerners, Fried rice, chicken, fish for anorexic people and fruits and fruit punch for fat people. With so many food available, nobody would ever go hungry! I ate only the Spaghetti & chicken. Went to attend 2 classes after that. Their classrooms were very nicely laid out and decorated. Every classroom has a different colour theme. The celling is very high which gives the impression of vast open space - the perfect environment for learning!Their tables though old, are not vandalised! This shows how disciplined the students in the school are. Sadly, the same can't be said for Queensway. The only gripe I have about the classes are that the doors are too small! I have difficulties walking in, I can't imagine how Kuok Loon will attend class with doors of this size!

Woodgrove Sec School classrooms. I like their colour scheme where by every classroom has different colours. Note the sparkling clean table and the high celling!
Another picture of a classroom. Note the different colour scheme.
Then, it was tea break! I think we came here for a feast instead of a conference. 5 hours and 3 meals. I hope I don't grow fat after this conference. I was disappointed to find out that chocolate puffs were all taken as i really love chocolates. Have to settle for cream puffs instead - which isn't bad either, but chocolate is still best! Then after tea break, it was another 2 lessons while Asraf & Shafiq went to attend sketching classes which only a few selected must attend. I really want to attend that course, too bad I'm not the alone with such thoughts as the course was fully booked. It got even worse when they came out of the class with this really nice looking and supposedly expensive Sketching book. Worst of all, the book contains A LOT of car and trucks and train pictures. What the heck! So many nice vehicle pictures and I don't get to admire them. I scanned through Shafiq's book and found out there was sketches of Audi R8, BMW Z9 concept car, BMW 6 series, DAF trucks, Scania Trucks, Maglev trains and many more. I almost got emo after returning the book to Shafiq. This is so NOT FAIR! I left the school knowing that I'll never see that book again, the gloomy skies did not help lift my mood either. It was kind of depressing end to the day.

Cy3lx later sent me a very contradictory picture of Sharifa which I can't post due to copyright restrictions.

Tuesday: Chemistry group study this morning. Came to school a little late as I was at my house starring at the mayhem that is going on at the road. You see, my area is under going lift upgrading and they are transporting components and machinery every now and then. It got even worse today when they closed the road so that they could transport parts of this very huge "300 Tonnes" crane. I will post the picture of the completed crane in my next post as they haven't finished assembling the crane. But by looking at the parts, its going to be one hell of a huge crane! They have to close the whole stretch of road and the car park for this incredible transportation mission. Horns were blaring from both sides as motorist tried making illegal 3 point turn to get out of the massive jam. Workers took half an hour going about their job. 5 public buses were stuck waiting for the road to be reopened. So sad for the people waiting at the bus stops after the closed stretch of road.

The flat bed truck (on the right) and trucks carrying the huge crane's component (on the left) blocking the road on both sides
During chemistry, some weird things happen as usual. Here's the pictures you've been waiting for.

Cy3lx getting back rubbed by Mr Wong. Shiok right?

Mr Wong wearing this Jersey with a very cool name - 35 years old?

Nadya dancing happily

Went to VivoCity with Cy3lx after Chem and went to eat Carl Jnr. I like the music they played that day as most of it contains the good old 80s/90s oldies and sentimental songs. Haikal joined us soon after and we went to Best Denki to play xbox. As usual, only one game interests me and that is Forza Motorsports 2. Too bad this 4o year old guy is hogging the console even though he keeps crashing and going off the track. Have to wait an agonising 8 minutes for him to leave. I played for a while, going off the track twice on my first lap! I don't usually go off the track, maybe I'm not used to the game yet as I last played the game last year on the Sentosa trip with Ryan and friends. Haikal soon joined me only to find out that the 2nd controller was in horrible state. He gave up playing and Cy3lx wanted to try out the game. It is clear that Cy3lx does not know how to play driving games as he keeps going off the track. I guess driving games are not everyone's cup of tea. But it's certainly my cup of coffee!

We were super bored later and went to Giant so that Haikal could buy food for his little kittys. He still loves them even though they attacked him countless of times already. I think his love for cats is the same as my love for cars. It works the same way, I don't understand his love for cats and people don't understand my love for cars. Whatever, talking about cars, I spotted this week's 8 Days magazine and guess what? They are featuring 10 Mediacorp artiste's cars. So cool. I learnt that Felicia Chin has a Mitsubitshi Clot Plus, Tay Ping Hui has a Mercedes C350 and Dick Lee has a wonderful Porsche Cayane! We also went to this DIY shop to play air hockey, "foolsball" and billiards. Air hockey was very fun. Won several rounds but lost some too. Haikal left later to feed his cats and its now Cy3lx and me left. We toured the huge mall and went into Toys R Us to find that the music that is being played is very cocky. It's kind of racist if translated to our version. I'll let Cy3lx do the dirty job.

We went to this "PageOne" bookshop that I never knew existed. Yes, I bought the 8 Days magazine and the March issue of Top Gear. I told myself before going Vivo not to buy any Top Gear magazines. But one solitary reason made me break that vow. What made me crumble under the pressure was the fact that they are featuring a 20+ page special about beautiful, exotic cars in TOKYO!!! I love Tokyo. I love their people, built up environment but most importantly, I love their extremely complex maze of roads. Its amazing how they can built such road systems. Now I know why almost all Japanese cars have GPS system built in. You could never memorise all the roads there. You have 4 levels of traffic consisting of a tunnel, a road at ground level and 2 bridges stacked up above them. Whats even more amazing is that their roads are extremely smooth and the bridges are all built to withstand strong earthquakes. I really take off my hat to those Japanese engineers! In short, I love Japan! That article also reminded me of the good old days when I was at Japan. I really want to visit Japan again! The school is planning a trip to Japan this June but due to the O levels, I don't think I'm allowed to go. What a waste!

Malaysia Trip

Wednesday: Yeah! Finally I can leave the country. Terence said in the morning that we are leaving to M'sia via the Causeway. Great! The jams there is going to be massive (I love jams) and I can enjoy watching other people's agony. Much to my disappointment, we endded up at Tuas checkpoint instead. The only saving grace was the 20 minute jam at Tuas. There are 2 buses in this trip and the Sec 4s are in bus number 2. We changed from a S'pore registered bus to a M'sia registered bus at the M'sia side of the checkpoint. The M'sia bus has really nice number plates. Both of our buses have the same number - 6969. Bus 1 was "AGG 6969" while Bus 2 was "BJT 6969". There was also a tour guide surprisingly.

Varun! Here are pictures of buses specially taken for you - Enjoy!

Bus 1 taken at M'sia checkpoint "AGG6969"

Bus 2 taken at AFamosa "BJT6969"
We went to this town called Gelang Patah in Johor for breakfast. First thing on the 'to do list'- Buy chewing gums! Then the sec 4 abandoned the rest and went to to have cheap and good Roti Prata. I ordered 2 eggs prata and 1 iced milo for only RM 4.50 which is around $2 in S'pore. Thats cheap! I found out that Yacub went to smoke before coming for breakfast. He showed us a pack of cirgrattes. I really wonder, what's so nice about smoking? He planned to finish all 12 sticks by tomorrow morning which I doubt he can. So whatever, went back to the bus. The long ride on the North South expressway tire out almost everybody on the bus. 1 hour into the trip, I can see that ALL sec 4s are asleep, except me of course. I'm am still starring out of the window praying to spot a Ferrari or 2. I chewed on gum and ate Toblerone to keep myself awake. I'm so addicted to Toblerone! By the end of the trip, cars spotted are (most number on top, least at the bottom):

1) Protons, Protons, Protons! Tons of Protons! ARGGGG! I hate Protons! 7 out of 10 cars I saw was a Proton! (Proton is M'sian national car brand)

2) Perodua (Another M'sian made car)
3) Toyota Wish (mostly S'pore registered)

The only interesting cars I saw was a Porsche Caynane. Yes THATS ALL! So much for the hype of seeing beautiful cars in M'sia. I guess the place to spot cars in M'sia is at Kuala Lumpur.

So we went to Tampin town for lunch at KFC only to find the "Restroan" packed. Chng told us we could eat on the bus so I ordered Zinger Meal take away. I like what they include in their meal. For RM 8.50 (about SGD$4) you get a Zinger Burger, cheese wedges (nice!) small fries and regular coke. Fast food in M'sia is cheap and good! The Zinger tasted better in M'sia than in S'pore which makes spending money more worth it.

We went to Giant later and I stocked up on my food supplies. Bought 6 Toblerones - Yes, 6! Crazy ain't I? A pack of large Famous Amos chocolate chip cookie - Yummy! Finally, some chocolate cookies. As you can see, I'm a hardcore chocoholic. Chocolate rocks!

Some "not so bad" cars spotted

Honda Stream with huge rims!

Proton Pedranca with modified bumpers and big rims.

Reached Afamosa Resort at about 4pm and checked in to our Condo Style apartment hotel. It has a big living room, 3 bed rooms, a kitchen, a bar and a storeroom. Ms Flora Lee & Lim Soo Ling took the master bedroom. Loser, 2 people sleep so big room. The rest of us have to squeeze - 6 people on 2 queen size bed.

The condo from the outside

We went to Cowboy town soon after and played bowling. Same as last year, the counting system at Afamosa SUCKS big time! For example, you missed all pins by rolling through the gutter, but, the system displays that you've got a strike! Whats worse is that my lane has only 9 pins out of the proper 10. Damn the bowling. I got so bored with it I went to play pools and air hockey. Many others soon followed. The air hockey was fun! The table was really smooth(when you feed the machine with money that is). Even without air, its still playable.

Asfraf & Ching Keat playing Air Hockey

Asraf playing some ball games

Ching Keat following Hari to be a jailbird nun wannabe :D

We ate at this chinese "Restroan" for dinner. The food as ok, not very nice but not bad either.
After that we had our free time. There was a carnival at 8.30pm which I cant be bothered to watch. So me, Ck and Mahd went to play pools. Yes, I suck at pools so I naturally lost to both of them. I did sink 4 balls though. Got bored with losing so I went to play Air Hockey again! So fun. We played till 10pm where we are supposed to meet at the entrance. Guess what, no teachers were there. Our bus was blocking the road and the driver was very angry when told that the teachers are not ready. He had to park his bus somewhere else until those bastard teachers came. Stupid them, tell us meet at 10pm, but they came at 10.20pm. Sorry bus uncle, we know that you are on time but what to do with those bastards when they are late? They are teachers after all and if they decide to be late, we cant scold them or punish them. We have to accept that they are losers and they don't keep promises but expect everything done correctly from us.

After that agonising wait in the rain for the bastards to arrive, we soon got back to our hotel. We played PSP. I found this really nice game called Ridge Racer. Its a racing game (as usual) and its fun drifting through the city. Daud was desperate for girls and begged the teachers to let the girls join us. They agreed and Daud played some games with them. After the girls left, Daud came up with this phrase "Smack that horny butt" and started smacking people's butt. Horny Daud! -.-" Before the trip, we made a deal that all of us would not sleep. However, by 4am, only 3 out of 11 us were awake. Those awake were Asraf, me and Muhd. We entertained ourself by playing PSP till 5am when I went to take a longggg shower.

Thursday:
The view at 7.30 am was beautiful. Take a look

We went to the Clubhouse where we had buffet breakfast. The food there is average. The only thing I liked about the breakfast was the ommlete and pepper hot dogs.

Yacub trying to 'protect' his eyes from the glarring morning sun

We later went to the Animal Safari World. First up, a truck ride through the forest where animals and humans bond together as one, errr well, sort of. The truck was caged up for our safety

The truck from the outside view
First animal we met was Horses! Yeah Cy3lx, you must be delighted!

Mama Horsey!

Next, the truck went down a very steep slope. Its very fun as it felt like being on a roller coaster ride!

The truck decending a steep slope

Cross breed of Mama Horsey and Seetah :D

Husband and Wife taking a romantic stroll at the park

Grisly bear receiving food from the driver

Grisly bear enjoying his meal - So cute!
Elephant doing some stunts

Elephant molesting some woman's butt
Yacub getting his crotch crushed by the big heavy elephant. Ouch!
Yacub riding an elephant
Lim Soo Ling got randy with an elephant!
She seems to be loving it

Emo monkey who kept banging his head against the cage!

Omg! Donkey having an erection (Circled in red) Horny Donkey!
Racoons! They sure look cute!
Ah Meng Jrn playing golf!
Lunch was the eky tasting chicken rice. So many bones and the rice has no taste. I had a hard time chewing the chicken. I eventually gave up eating and threw whats remaining.

We left Afamosa resort for Meleka town. I thought they would bring us to the old town but no! Instead, they brought us to this hypermarket named Tesco.

Exterior of the hypermarket Tesco
James May's Honda Jazz (circled in yellow)
Entrance to Tesco
There was nothing much for me to buy in there as I have done all my shopping at Giant the day before. So I just walked around and took some pictures.

The huge interior, look at how high the celling is!
Lots of banners displayed
I found out something shocking later. While we were all enjoying our time in the shopping mall, Daud, Helmi and some other sec 2 guy got locked up in the bus. They were sleeping and the driver just locked the door leaving them inside the bus. I remembered Mahd and me waking Daud up, I guessed he must have fallen asleep after that. They got stuck in the bus for 40 mins until some people walked passed. The 3 of them climbed through the driver's window with the help of 2 passer bys. Poor things! The driver should check his bus before locking the door next time. I also saw this amazing traffic light at Meleka. It has a timer on it indicating how much green time is left before the light turns red. It also tells how much red time is left before the light turns green. S'pore did have this system in the past but was abolished because the authrorities saw motorist practicing unsafe driving to beat the timer. I hope S'pore implements this amazing system on all our traffic lights soon!

A traffic light with a timer on it. 47 seconds left before light turns green.

The trip on the bus was incredibly boring. It didn't help that my phone's mp3 ran out of batt. I tried to keep myself awake by chewing on gums and eating Toblerone. As far as I can see, everybody else were sleeping soundly except me. The abundance of Proton cars are getting on my nerves. The fact that I did not sleep the previous night did not do anything to keep me awake. I endured the ride all the way to Tg Kupang checkpoint where the bus missed the checkpoint exit for buses and have to reverse back against oncoming traffic. Thats the only interesting 'event' that happened during the bus ride back. Oh ya, it was raining heavily on the way back and I saw a car slamming into a tree by the expressway. I hope the driver is all right as the car does not look to be too badly damaged. The bus was speeding all the way through the ride too! The speed is what kept me awake.

Anyway, we have to change back to a S'pore registered bus at Tg Kupang checkpoint. The bus came 30mins late and we have to wait in the cold pouring rain for the bus to arrive. There was a huge jam on the S'pore side towards M'sia. It stretched for about 3km. Poor people who got stuck in jams. At Tuas checkpoint, the immigration officers did not check our bags for chewing gums. Wasted! Could have brought a box of chewing gums home. I guess they are too interested in finding Mas Selemat to bother about gums. They should have done that long ago. The bus sent us back to Commonwealth MRT station where I joined Daud and some others for dinner at Long John Silvers. Went home after that.

As you can see, the M'sia trip was nothing special save for a few gay moments. Formula 1 this Sunday at Melbourne Australia, be sure to catch it 'Live' on Starhub cable TV ch 24. I hope Ferrari wins but in F1, anything can happen. With this, I'll end my longest post yet! Bless Ferrari on their quest to become the champions of the F1 2008 season. Till then, enjoy your holidays while you can!